The DLC Battalion can now be added to your Steam wishlist. The first public announcement took place as part of the Games Germany Showcase, alongside a reveal trailer.
July 20, 2026 – Berlin-based game studio Paintbucket Games releases the first trailer for its newly announced expansion Battalion for The Darkest Files. In this DLC, players once again take on the role of investigators and use the new Hierarchy Board to piece together fragmented witness testimonies, reconstruct chains of command, and prove responsibility.
Watch the trailer on YouTube: https://youtu.be/8ITr1W0dQ4w
The trailer offers a glimpse into a gripping new case: people are being driven away on a truck; two women hide in tall grass and witness a crime. This gives us a first look at the oppressive atmosphere of Battalion. Familiar faces such as Fritz Bauer and Simon Peters return, showing that Esther Katz will not be investigating this case alone. A brief look at the new Hierarchy Board reveals how players will need to dive even deeper into the connections between suspects.
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Battalion is the most extensive case in The Darkest Files to date.
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The new Hierarchy Board gives players an additional investigation tool alongside the existing Blueprint, helping them trace chains of command, responsibilities, and connections between suspects more clearly.
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New locations can be explored.
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Additional office interactions let players get to know their colleagues at the prosecutor's office even better.
Historical Background
Fritz Bauer was a German lawyer. As a Jew and a declared opponent of the National Socialists, he was dismissed from his position and taken to a concentration camp. He emigrated in 1936 and resisted the Nazis from exile.
After the war, he returned to Germany and worked as a public prosecutor - he became known, among other things, as one of the key whistleblowers in the capture of Holocaust organizer Adolf Eichmann and as the initiator of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials in the 1960s.
The Case in Battalion is based on true events - just like the previous cases in The Darkest Files. However, this case is even bigger and darker than the ones told before. It is no longer about individual perpetrators, but about a crime on a much larger scale. The story raises the question of how chains of command, peer pressure, and gradual normalization can lead ordinary people to take part in extraordinary crimes.
The Darkest Files - Battalion can be wishlisted on Steam here.
More about The Darkest Files and Paintbucket Games can be found on the Website as well as on BlueSky, Instagram, and TikTok.
About Paintbucket Games
The indie studio was founded in 2018 by Jörg Friedrich and Sebastian St. Schulz. Both have been developing games for over 20 years and played key roles in the development of AAA titles such as Spec Ops: The Line and Dead Island 2 before founding their own studio.
Today, a diverse team of developers works on The Darkest Files at the studio in Berlin. The studio creates narrative games about the history of National Socialism and its legal reckoning, including Through the Darkest of Times (2020) and Remember. The Children of Bullenhuser Damm (2024). The Darkest Files was released on March 25, 2025 for PC and Mac, and has been available for Nintendo Switch since March 2026. The game won the German Developer Award 2025 in the categories Best Game Design and Best Game Beyond Entertainment, as well as the German Computer Games Award 2026 in the categories Best German Game and Best Serious Game.