Easy Red 2: Blood on the Danube promo shot
Image: Corvostudio di Amadei Marco

There are some real cult hit games out there with likely hundreds of thousands of players, but you'll never hear about them unless you know where to look. Easy Red 2 from tiny Italian outfit Corvostudio is a fine example. A lightweight and accessible WW2 battleground sim, letting you control infantry, planes, tanks and more across massive dynamic battlegrounds, all primarily developed by Marco Amadei. This one has been growing and updating since 2020, and today it receives its fifth paid expansion: Blood on the Danube.

While the base game was focused on the Italian and Pacific fronts of the war, Easy Red 2's expansions have taken it to many more WW2 battlegrounds, including Normandy, Stalingrad, and (most unusually) beyond WW2 to Shanghai and Nanking in the '30s. The game also has extensive Steam Workshop support, which has spawned mods that expand the game into WW1 and the modern era.

Today's expansion focuses on WW2's Hungarian front: 35 missions across three battles where German forces lost to the Russian army - the Siege of Budapest, the Konrad Offensives and Operation Spring Awakening. Corvostudio boasts that this expansion depicts the Hungarian front and its fighters in "a greater level of visual and historical detail than was previously possible in Easy Red 2 or any videogame on the market prior". Given the level of history nerds the Easy Red 2 developers are, I'd not bet against them on that claim.

Similar to other 'light' sims such as Running With Rifles and the increasingly popular Nuclear Option, Easy Red 2 eschews scripted missions for simulated scenarios. Two massive AI-led armies fighting for the same objectives as those armies did over eighty years ago, left largely in the hands of luck, but with human players on either side able to put a finger on the scales. Playable solo, co-op or competitively, the battles in Easy Red 2 are packed with expendable NPC troops and vehicles, free for any player on that team to assume control, and (if possessing a squad leader) order around their subordinates.

It sounds complex, and while some parts can be (especially radioing in artillery strikes), it is, for the most part, a pick-up-and-play experience. Anyone who's played an older Medal of Honor or two should be able to jump straight in, with simple FPS controls that apply equally to infantry, vehicles and aircraft. Squad spawns can be scaled up if you've got a beefy enough PC for it, and it's easy to jump into public servers or create games with your friends. It doesn't require an especially powerful PC, and while it might not have any AAA sheen to it, there sure is a lot of historical shooting to be done here, and it doesn't look half bad either.

The only concern I have about the expansion is a brief AI usage note on the store page, stating that some localizations include machine-translated elements, and that the studio cannot confirm there was zero AI use by remote team members. Not particularly worrying, but if that's a dealbreaker, I understand.

Easy Red 2: Blood on The Danube is out now for £7.15/$8, with a 25% launch discount, and a little more saved if you own the game's other expansions already. The base game is also on sale for half price, bringing it down from its normal £8/$9 price tag. Both discounts run until July 29th.