Early 1965 – Regular US military units are deployed on Vietnamese soil. The American government sends massive support to South Vietnam to prevent the Viet Cong forces from the North unifying the entire country under the Communist banner. This Cold War conflict was not only fought with classic weapons, but also with unconventional tactics in order to gain support from civilians.

Vietnam ’65 aims to capture this unique warfare duality. This is why the players’ main task is not to crush their opponent as they usually do in other strategy games, but to win the hearts and minds of the local population! Their main focus will be to plan and execute counter-insurgency operations so that they will prevent villages falling under Viet Cong influence. Thanks to a refined AI and a randomly generated campaign map, players should be ready to face tough and surprising challenges!

Thanks to fruitful weeks of in-depth testing, the game has now entered its late beta phase.

Tomorrow, on February 11th, 20.00 (CEST), Matrix Games are going to give players a sneak peak of the game on the official Twitch channel!

In order to win the Hearts and Minds of the local population you will need to search for and destroy the Vietcong (VC) insurgents, who infiltrate from the Ho Chi Minh trail and destabilize the province by intimidating the locals, laying mines and ambushing your forces.

The insurgents also have a bigger brother, the North Vietnamese Army (NVA). This well trained, conventional army have much wider ambitions than the VC, they want to take total control of the valley, a stepping stone to unifying North Vietnam with the South under communist rule. The NVA conducts operations from across the border, primarily aimed at supporting the insurgency and launching offensives when the time is right.

To carry out your COIN mission, co-ordination of ground troops, special forces, artillery, mechanized units, training of local forces (ARVN) and airmobile assets is essential, but of greater consequence is winning the support of the local population. With greater co-operation from the local inhabitants comes the reward of intelligence, a key factor in COIN warfare.

The war is not fought in isolation, so as the commander of the US forces, you will have the added complexity of managing the support for the war back home, should you the lose the Hearts and Minds of the American people, the war will also be surely lost.

This is a game that captures the true essence of the Vietnam War, where airmobile operations are paramount, fire support bases play a critical role and air strikes can save the day.

Rise through the ranks and watch your personalized uniform transform from a junior Lieutenant to General as you relive the Vietnam War.