THE SQUAD IS READY
A VERY SMALL SQUAD. A VERY BIG WAR.

GI GEORGI!

Round up your recruits. Drop into the field. Bring every Georgi home.

REPORT TO CAMP

The war starts in camp. Your campaign and camp save automatically in this browser.

Gi Georgi!

0 left 0 MISSION 1 · 1/1 Kill all enemy troops

Mission 1 phase 1 of 1

First Footing Jungle Kill all enemy troops

THE DROP TEAM

Phase complete

Boot Hill mission 1 done

Dogtags

None yet. A fallen Georgi drops their tag where they go down; walk another Georgi over it and it comes home to this list.

    The war is over

    Tactical map paused

    The squad

      The phase

      —

      Air drop

      —

      Reinforcements walk off the front of the queue on Boot Hill — calling them in spends the war's reserve early, and they get a headstone like anyone else.

      Map key, and what the fog is hiding
      • Georgi, in the chain
      • leader
      • holding
      • fallen
      • under canopy
      • enemy
      • tank
      • hut
      • base
      • nest
      • hostage
      • supply
      • salvage
      • drop zone
      • the outpost
      • dug in
      • where a wave walks in
      • smelled, not seen
      • the wind

      Ground you have never walked past is blank; ground you remember is dimmed. Huts, gun nests, the base and the outpost stay on the map once found — they cannot move. Enemy troops, tanks, hostages and bundles are drawn only while a Georgi is looking at them — or, as a broken ring round about where they are, while a Georgi can smell them downwind.

      Gi Georgi! gigeorgi.com

      How to play

      The old top-down squad game, with little Georgis. Your squad walks in single file: click the ground and the leader goes there, the rest follow in the leader's footsteps. Click a Georgi to select them, shift-click to add more, or drag a rectangle round a few; whoever is not selected holds where they stand. Nobody pulls a trigger. Every Georgi fires on their own at what they can see, and a Georgi sees twice as far the way they face as all round — the way they walk, or the way you turn them with the right button. Privates scatter their shots, generals barely waver. Rifles do nothing to a hut or a gun nest: those take a grenade or a rocket. One unprotected hit kills a trooper; a nearby Waffles can intercept one direct shot per phase, but no medic can stop a blast. Each named recruit has a role and signature skill shown in the briefing and roster. Each phase names its objective; each mission is a run of phases; the war is thirty missions across five theatres. After the briefing, an olive transport scouts the battlefield and the Georgi squad parachutes into a clear patch of natural terrain. Movement and combat begin once the last trooper lands.

      • left click on a Georgi or their drone — select them (shift adds them or takes them back out) · drag — draw a rectangle round who you want · on the ground — send whoever is selected there
      • right click — the chain looks at the pointer, and keeps looking there while it holds its ground (hold the button and their eyes follow the pointer)
      • right held + left click — lob a grenade at the pointer
      • left held + right click — fire a rocket (a grenade if the rack is empty)
      • WASD / arrows — walk the chain without a click · Space looks at the pointer · G grenade · R rocket
      • no fire button — a Georgi shoots anything awake they can see, and a sleeper only up close, where they are looking, while the squad is not sneaking
      • C or SNEAK — the squad sneaks: slower, quieter and harder to see, until you press it again
      • B — while there is time to dig in at the outpost, the next thing to build: sandbags, a trench, a turret, and nothing. Then click the ground to dig it in.
      • 1–6 — select that Georgi (shift adds them; the squares down the left do the same); 0 or ALL selects everyone · P or ⏸ freezes the field and opens the tactical map
      • on a phone — tap a Georgi or a square to select them (a drone, its tab beside the square), ALL for everyone, and tap the map to send them; hold LOOK and touch the map, or tap LOOK and then the map, to turn the squad's eyes; GRENADE and ROCKET throw at your finger, or at the nearest hut, nest or trooper in range

      The tactical map

      P or the ⏸ button freezes the phase and opens the map: the whole battlefield at once, with an overview of what the objective still asks for and where every Georgi is standing. It shows only what you have earned — ground you have never walked past is blank, ground you remember is dimmed, and enemy troops, tanks, hostages and supply bundles appear only while a Georgi is actually looking at them. Huts, gun nests and base buildings stay on the map once found; they cannot move.

      From the map you can call more Georgis in by air drop — at most two per drop. They come down under canopies beside the squad while the fight carries on around them, and a fresh Georgi steps into a fallen one's place on the roster. They are not free: each one walks off the front of the queue on Boot Hill, so calling a pair every time somebody falls empties the hill a mission sooner. The transport needs three quarters of a minute to come round between drops, and it will not fly at all with nobody on the hill or no room in the squad.

      The other side

      The opening enemy force is alien. The ordinary crabs and squid carry no guns: guards stand a post and skitterers walk a beat, and once awake both come at you and strike, two at a time — shoot them before they arrive. The heavier spitters stand off and lob, and what the war adds later brings its own guns. They emerge around crashed ships and from intact landed dropships. From the sixth mission mechanized guards roll with them: a rifle round sparks off the hull, a grenade takes two of its three points of armour and a rocket takes all three, and while it is awake it stands off and drops shells. Tracks cannot ford the shallows a Georgi wades. They wake when they see you, or hear a shot — see Staying unseen. Landed ships and brood nests keep sending aliens out while you are near, until the structure is flattened or its garrison is spent. Gun nests rake anything in range and only a blast silences them. Rock and trees stop bullets in both directions; a blast clears trees and leaves a crater. Crates restock grenades and rockets; from the third mission one crate holds a rocket launcher — whoever walks over it shoulders six rockets and fires those instead of rifle rounds, into armour first and never where the blast would catch one of your own, then goes back to the rifle. The tube stays with that trooper across the mission’s phases, and dies with them. Hostages join the chain when touched and are safe once they return to the parachute drop site.

      Salvage and research

      A dead alien or a wrecked craft can leave salvage behind: walk a Georgi onto the glint. Tissue and carapace cool the longer they lie, and the hardware keeps. What the squad carries off comes home as research when the phase is won, and at the camp Mad Georgi spends it at his bench beside the command post, on projects that last the war — tougher Georgis, fuller rifles, longer noses, and a bio retrieval team you call from the pause sheet to bring in every piece on the field.

      Holding the outpost

      Every battlefield has one of our own stations in the middle of it, overrun before you landed. Clearing the area is only the first half of a battle: once the phase’s objective is met, walk a Georgi up to the outpost with nothing of theirs close by and the flag goes up.

      Then you have a countdown to dig in. The bar at the top gives you engineering stores and three things to spend them on: sandbags (1), a parapet that covers the way it faces — a Georgi behind it is hard to hit from the front and ordinary to hit from the side; a trench (2), which covers whoever stands in it from every side; and an MG turret (4), which fires on its own inside the arc it faces until its belt runs out. Tap a kind (or press B) and tap the ground to dig it in; the ghost shows where it would go and which way it would cover. Tap one of your own to take it back and get the stores returned. Everything faces away from the outpost, because that is where the waves are coming from. START ends the countdown early.

      A transport drops a heavy machine gun and a sniper rifle beside the outpost: whoever walks onto one carries it for the rest of the phase — the gunner throws long bursts and walks slower, the sniper reaches further than anything else on the field and picks off commanders and rocket troopers first. The transport is also ready to bring more Georgis down off Boot Hill, which is what CALL on the bar does. Take a Georgi out of the chain with their digit or their chip and they hold where they stand, watching the way they were looking when you left them — so turn the chain toward the approach they should cover before you post someone.

      The waves then come for it. Two in the jungle, up to five on the moor, walking in off the edges of the map with a breather between them. While the outpost is yours it is also a depot: it hands out bandages, tops your grenades and rockets back up and keeps the turrets’ belts full, along the lines you can see drawn from it — and an alien standing on a line cuts it. A supply canopy restocks the depot in every breather, and you can spend what it brings on more digging.

      If they stand at the flag and you do not, it comes down; if it reaches the ground the outpost is overrun and the phase is lost, to be fought again. Beat the last wave and it is held — that is how a phase is won now.

      Staying unseen

      They see in a cone. A sleeping alien sees a long way in front of it and only a couple of tiles behind, and rock, trees and walls block its view the same way they block a round. You can see the cone on the ground in front of every one you can see. A sentry that stands still sweeps its look from side to side; a patrol looks where it walks. It is not sure straight away: the cone warms from pale to red while it looks at you, and a ? goes up over its head. Get out of the cone before it is sure, or it wakes with a ! and its fireteam wakes with it. A turning radar, or a command bunker nearby, lets them see further ahead, until the generator goes.

      They hear what you do. A shot, a rocket or a blast wakes everyone in earshot. Footsteps do not, but a sleeper that hears one turns to look, and gets more suspicious with every step. Water splashes, rubble crunches and roads are quiet. Press C or SNEAK and the squad sneaks: a little over half the pace, a fifth of the noise, and harder to spot. Holding still and standing in woods, craters or rubble also make a Georgi harder to see.

      Nothing you cannot see shoots you. A spitter, a tank or a gun nest out in the dark holds its fire; anything that can walk comes closer until you can see it, and takes a moment before its first shot. A shot always comes from something on your screen.

      You see the way you face. A Georgi sees seven tiles all round and fourteen ahead — as far as a rifle reaches — so a squad watching the approach opens fire long before one caught looking the other way. They look where they walk; standing still, they look where you last turned them. They shoot a sleeper only where they are looking and only up close — six tiles, where one round kills — and never while the squad sneaks, so creep up with C on, face what you want dead, and stop sneaking to open up.

      Drones scout on a battery. Every Georgi lands with a scout drone that circles them and lights the fog. Select one — click it, or its tab beside its Georgi's square — and click the map: it flies there, looks around and comes home on its own, never further out than its battery can bring it back from. Hovering home beside its Georgi charges it; the tab's bar is the charge. A drone the other side can see, it will shoot down.

      You smell them. Georgis are dogs. Every battlefield has a wind, and it shifts a little as the fight goes on. A Georgi can smell an alien that is upwind of them, much further off than they can see, and anything very close whichever way the wind blows. What you smell but cannot see shows as a whiff over the fog, roughly where it is. The dust blowing across the screen shows the wind, the tactical map has a wind arrow in its corner, and the briefing tells you the wind before you land.

      Training ground

      Somewhere to learn without being shot while you read this. On the training ground the other side is on the field and asleep, and stays that way: nobody wakes, no hut or nest sends anyone out, and the gun nests hold fire. Everything of yours works exactly as it does in the war — the chain, the guns, grenades, rockets, the scout drone, crates and craters — so what you learn there is the real game. Sleeping patrols still walk their beat, so you get moving targets rather than statues. Heads still turn to a footstep and cones still warm while they look at you, so it is the place to practise sneaking — only the waking never comes.

      It is a skirmish: a fresh squad, and your war is not touched — nobody is taken off the hill, nobody is buried, nothing is saved. Add ?peace=1 to any other link — a mission, a level — and you get that phase with the same quiet.

      The jungle

      The war opens on six painted boards, and every phase of a mission is fought on its own. The canopy between the trails is closed — nothing crosses it — so each board leaves two or three deliberate ways through, and you always know which way trouble can arrive from. Each of them also plays as a skirmish off the war: a fresh squad, nothing saved.

      • First Footing — the mud track up the middle, or the plank walk along the east wall
      • The Riverbank — one river, three crossings: the gravel ford, the timber bridge, the stepping stones
      • Hut Country — a stilt village over standing water; the headman's house only by his own walk
      • Two Bridges — the stone bridge takes tracks, the rope bridge takes feet, and losing one leaves the other
      • The Long Walk — swamp, prisoners on a dry island, and three single-file ways across
      • Canopy — a temple on the high terrace, three ways up, and only the stone avenue wide enough for armour

      Epic upgrade

      Georgi's squad has eight-direction movement and directional combat, while the new squid fight beside the existing crabs. Two high-detail painted levels and a third authored level play as skirmishes off the war: a fresh squad, nothing saved.

      Boot Hill

      Fifteen recruits wait on the hill. Each mission takes its squad off the front of the line; survivors come back a rank higher and go out first next time; the fallen get a headstone; three volunteers join the back. Lose the whole squad and the mission starts over with whoever is next. Lose everyone on the hill and the war is lost. The campaign saves itself in this browser.

      The camp

      Every battle of the war starts and ends at the travelling camp. Walk General Georgi to the mission control board to launch the next phase, and after it the squad comes home to upgrade. A battle is a round: after each one the army's allowance arrives, the tents fill their crates, crews finish building and the trucks come back from their service runs. Kit issued in camp goes into the field with its Georgi. Crates of camp stores lie about the battlefield — supplies, munitions, medical — and an enemy ammunition store, field hospital, generator or depot leaves its own in the rubble; walk a Georgi onto one and it goes home with a won phase.