How to Play Hamburger Hill: Your First Campaign Battle

Hamburger Hill starts its campaign with New Game. A newspaper sets the scene, Col Hard offers you two ways into the war and you then fight the first battle yourself in first person, with a 12-man squad. Between battles you spend money on recruits and end the turn. We played this way in the 0.8.3 Linux build on November 2, 2026. This guide follows the screens in order and points out the mistake that cost us our first squad leader. For the keys in one place, see the controls table .

What is on the Hamburger Hill main menu?

The main menu has New Game, Quick Play, Tutorial, Options and Quit, with Load Game added once a campaign exists. New Game is the campaign. Quick Play sets up single battles with your own rules, and Tutorial is a trench training range. If you have never played a shooter with squad orders, start with the Tutorial: it gives one order at a time, such as “Move up to the post”, with the key to press under it.

Before your first battle, open Options. The Gameplay tab sets Violence, which starts on High, the game speed, hit markers, camera shake and the art style. The Controls tab lists every key and has no Look keys for the keyboard, since you look with the mouse.

What does the campaign map show?

The campaign map shows Granovia, a made-up country, split into 12 provinces . The bar across the top holds five readouts:

The right side shows your army as portraits, with Recruit and Inventory buttons, and the targets you can attack. The End Turn button is at the top right, next to a gear icon that opens Options, Save, Main Menu and Quit.

How do you start the first battle?

Col Hard asks “What’ll it be, Sarge?” and offers Drop on Riverbend or Storm the Beaches. We picked the drop. That opens the battle setup screen, where you choose how to go in and the time of day, then look over the squad.

Each soldier has a role and a kit: a gear level of Light, Medium or Heavy, a primary and a secondary weapon, two pouches and two kit slots. The Leader box marks the man you play. You can leave the kits as they are for a first battle. Press Assault and answer Yes to Ready.

How do you fight a battle?

You play the squad leader in first person. W, A, S and D move you, the left mouse button fires, the right button aims down the sights and R reloads. G throws a grenade and X changes the grenade type. The HUD at the bottom shows your squad’s faces, the time and compass, your grenades and your ammo as rounds loaded and rounds in reserve.

Your squad follows orders from two keys:

• F switches between “Hold here” and “On me”.
• V cycles the squad mode through “Hold your fire”, “Defensive” and “Offensive”.

Every order shows in the log at the bottom left, along with news such as “You’ve been spotted” or a soldier going down. If your leader dies, you can carry on as another member of the squad. When we pressed Enter after our leader fell, control passed to the machine gunner.

What did our first battle teach us?

On an airborne drop you must press E to open your parachute when the screen says “[E] Open Chute”. We did not, and our leader landed as Killed in Action. The airborne guide covers the drop step by step. We then left the battle from the pause menu, and it was scored as “Riverbend Lost”: 9 of the 12 men were stamped KIA and Support fell by 60.

Back on the map our army list was empty, and Col Hard said “We should recruit. We have no men left.”

What do you do between battles?

Recruit, check your gear and end the turn. The Recruit screen priced each Rifleman, Machine Gunner, Medic, Radio Operator or Engineer at $5,066,885 and a Flamethrower at $15,200,655 in our game. The Auto button builds a balanced 12-man squad. Ours came to $60,802,620.

End Turn moves the war forward a month. Our second turn opened on a new paper, The Stateside Herald, reporting that no paratroopers had come back and that the GPA had taken Red Clay Valley from the Warlords. Money went up by about $25 million and Support fell a little. Save from the gear menu before you try anything risky.

What should you try next?

Once the campaign makes sense, set up a few battles in Quick Play . You can pick from 14 presets, change the weather and insertion, fight as any of the three factions and try the five Squad Kit roles without paying for recruits.