Gallipoli Review: BlackMill Games Takes World War I to the Ottoman Front

BlackMill Games has spent a decade digging trenches. The Dutch studio built Verdun, then Tannenberg, then Isonzo, each one a first-person shooter fixed to a different corner of World War I. Gallipoli, out 20 August 2026 on PlayStation 5, Windows and Xbox Series X/S, is the fourth entry in the WW1 Game Series, and it moves the series to the Middle Eastern theater. It is the studio’s most complete game.

Trailer, via FGS.

Beach Landings and Sun-Scorched Deserts

Gallipoli takes its name from the 1915 Battle of Gallipoli. The game drops players into the historic beach landings on the Gallipoli Peninsula and the expeditions across Mesopotamia. You fight as a regular soldier of either the British Empire — Australia, Britain and India — or the Ottoman Empire. Defend Ottoman territory, or take it and drive the Central Power out of the war.

Verdun was mud. Tannenberg was snow. Isonzo was rock.

Gallipoli is sand, open shore and heat, and the maps are built on the real battlefields of the Middle Eastern Front. There is nowhere to hide in the way the earlier games let you hide.

Five Squads, Five Players, One Shot

The core mode is tactical squad-based PVP, and the rules are unforgiving. This is a hardcore, one-shot-one-kill environment. Teamwork is not a suggestion.

Each side fields five squads of five players or bots, and each squad fills a combat role. The Assault squad is the vanguard. The Support squad keeps the line alive with medical treatment and ammunition. The officer leads, the Light Machine Gunner fires, the Stretcher Bearer drags the squad back into the fight.

Classes carry different weapons and equipment, so a squad that ignores its composition pays for it. The game runs on Unity 6, and the historical detail is the point: accurate World War I weapons, authentic uniforms and equipment, and detailed injury and gore modeling.

Suppression That Actually Breaks You

BlackMill has overhauled suppression, and it is the best change in the game. Minor suppression affects weapon sway and recoil control. Severe suppression goes further — your soldier will sometimes bungle a reload or forget to close the bolt on a bolt-action rifle under stress. That is a mechanic that turns incoming fire into a real problem rather than a screen effect.

Weapons and equipment no longer need to be manually unlocked, which strips out the grind that weighed down the earlier titles. Time with a weapon instead raises your effectiveness through perks. Class progression works the same way.

Stamina, Pistols and Light Machine Guns

Stamina is now dynamic. Vaulting, sprinting and melee all draw on it. Running no longer happens at one constant speed: your soldier starts fast and flags as the meter drains. You can still sprint when empty, just slower than a normal sprint. Running with a pistol is significantly faster than running with a light machine gun.

That last detail quietly fixes a decade-old problem. Heavy weapons finally cost you something in movement, and the choice of what to carry becomes a choice about how you play.

The Ottoman Front Gets Its Due

The Middle Eastern theater has been the least-served corner of World War I in games, and Gallipoli treats it as a subject rather than a novelty. The British Empire roster spans Australia, Britain and India. The Ottoman Empire is a full playable side, not a target. The beach landings and the Mesopotamian expeditions give the multiplayer battles their shape.

BlackMill describes the fighting as grounded, yet accessible. That is the studio’s own framing, and it is the right one for a game that asks for teamwork without demanding a history degree first.

Release Schedule

What Holds It Back

Gallipoli is a multiplayer game first. The one-shot-one-kill rule will drive away players who want a longer fight. Dying to a single round from a rifle you never saw is the design, not a bug, but it narrows the audience.

Bots fill out squads, and that is a practical answer to population problems. Whether they can carry a role the way a human teammate can is a question the game will have to answer after launch.

Where Gallipoli Lands

Gallipoli is the best game BlackMill has made, and the reason is that the studio finally built a theater and a rule set that reinforce each other. Open desert and beaches reward the squad play the class system demands. Suppression that makes you fumble a bolt is the most convincing combat stress the series has produced. Dropping manual weapon unlocks respects the player’s time.

The published critical score is 8.3 out of 10, with a Metacritic score of 83 out of 100. Gallipoli is not a reinvention of the shooter, and it does not try to be. It is a sharp, specific, historically serious game about a front most shooters ignore, and it earns its place as the fourth and strongest entry in the WW1 Game Series. The Ottoman Front was overdue. BlackMill made the wait worth it.

BlackMill Games · FPS · Gallipoli · game review · Ottoman Front · WW1 Game Series