This past Sunday, WARDOGS, an upcoming FPS by developer BULKHEAD, concluded its final playtest before its Early Access release on September 10th. To say it went well would be the understatement of the year. In total, over half a million people participated in the event, with concurrent users peaking at 105,000 on Sunday night. Aside from some connection and VoIP issues in the opening hours, BULKHEAD’s big weekend went by without a hitch.
Many, myself included, went into this weekend with tempered expectations. Clip-worthy as the last playtest was, Early Access is always a gamble. My plan this weekend was to play a bit on Friday, a little on Saturday with a friend, and then spend Sunday at the beach. Instead, I no-lifed WARDOGS for 25 hours—and loved every minute of it.
The main shock was just how thoroughly WARDOGS delivered on its lofty ambitions. It promised to shake up an FPS landscape that has become stale with familiar tropes. Its marketing campaign mostly made that case by focusing on everything WARDOGS wasn’t. It’s not an extraction shooter, a battle royale, or a hardcore milsim. It’s similar to all of those things, but grounded, slower, and more accessible. Think of it as Warzone without wall-running Ninja Turtles, PUBG without gas, ARMA 3 without a four-year learning curve, and Escape from Tarkov without the masochism. It’s an FPS for your dad—similar to the shooters he wants to play but is too employed to enjoy.
“WARDOGS gave him the space to mill about, snipe a couple of guys, build a little fort, and sit in the forest watching helicopters explode.”
Impressively, BULKHEAD created the freshest tactical shooter in years by being the most blatantly derivative. All it took was listening to players who missed the shooters they grew up on. The movement is slower and grounded without being a slog, discouraging the sweaty plays that dominate faster shooters. Combat has stakes but isn’t needlessly punishing. The mechanics are complex without requiring labyrinthine menus, and there’s just enough arcadeyness to remind you that this isn’t a milsim. But the fast time-to-kill and tactical depth mean you can’t approach fights like a modern Call of Duty deathmatch.
On the surface, WARDOGS is a tactical FPS that pits three teams of 33 mercenaries against each other in a modified version of king of the hill. Each team fights for control of strategic locations to keep as many men as possible in an always-moving control zone. Whichever team has the most dudes in the zone at the end of a cycle will get a point. The first team to 100 points wins. Inside the control zone is a smaller floating Hot Zone (HZ) where each player counts as two dudes.
Controlling the battlefield means teams will have to split into jobs. There isn’t a class system, but rather, tools and mechanics that naturally sort a lobby into like-minded subgroups. The sweats will end up roaming the map as a murderous flock, hunting in the HZ and raiding enemy forts. Others will team up to build sandbag castles and lock down strategic positions. A select few will act as transport pilots, flying in supplies to the construction projects and ferrying respawns back to the battlefield—and usually crashing.
Watching the players filter into all these different roles was very odd. Twenty minutes into every match and you’d have a lobby where people were playing totally separate games. You’d have your killers, sure, but most others were creating jobs for themselves that seemed wholly unrelated to a team win. There was always someone building a bridge fort far away from the action, or a superfluous death maze being devised in an apartment complex. Every so often, a mechanic shop would be constructed solely to service the helicopter that supplied it.
One guy bought a transport truck every game and would drive it to construction sites where a self-appointed foreman would direct him to the correct gate, which was operated by someone whose sole occupation was opening the doors. People were so fresh off their work week that they recreated their jobs in a first-person shooter. It was as wholesome as it was hilarious to watch.
It was my friend Dave who pointed this out. Dave is the target market for WARDOGS: he’s not young, he’s not old, he likes war games but also has to work in the morning. During a match, I found Dave crouched on a hill just watching the war unfold. “Man, this is pretty fun to just watch.” He wanted to fight, and he did a bit, but he was also mentally preparing for his next 12-hour shift. WARDOGS gave him the space to mill about, snipe a couple of guys, build a little fort, and sit in the forest watching helicopters explode. The chat was filled with Daves.
Being king of the hill was rarely the point. People were more interested in finding their friends on the playground and doing their own thing. Like a real playground, that thing would often be interrupted by roaming skirmishes and clashing personalities. The team that won was always the one with a battle daddy, someone who would find a strategy in the chaos and suggest one useful thing for each group to do. In a full lobby, you can expect to find one or two battle daddies—it’s the rarest role of all.
Most games ended with one team having 100 points, while second place had substantially less and third had only one or two. The best I can figure is that’s because WARDOGS isn’t really an FPS or a king of the hill game; it’s a recess simulator. The goal was to have as much fun as possible before the bell rings.
Part of that could be because no one fully understands the game yet. There was a lot to learn, and only a weekend to explore, so we all settled on playing around. But there’s a filthy layer of scum floating on the surface that’s easy to miss when you first dive in: money.
Cash is king in WARDOGS, and it complicates everything. Teams win by points, but the leaderboard is ranked by individual profit. Players earn cash by killing enemies, helping squaddies, and holding territory—but also by extorting their teammates. One of the most prominent elements on the HUD is a counter showing your bank balance and how much you’ve made or lost during your current life. This is no minor thing.
“Since Sunday, I’ve tried to fill the WARDOGS-shaped hole in my heart with Squad and ARMA 3, but the emptiness remains.”
It hasn’t sunk in yet, but money is going to turn this sandbox into a putrid bog. As a Shrek-like entity, I couldn’t be happier. I spent my weekend walking a fine line between “science” and griefing, looking for creative ways to bilk my teammates for everything they were worth. Whether it was turning the spawn truck into a deathtrap and charging exorbitant prices for heals, or destroying friendly helicopters to maintain my transport monopoly, the cash mechanics defined how I played each match. If my team wanted to win, they would have to pay me for the privilege.
My best hustle was selling marked-up building supplies to a building crew from the back of my stolen helicopter. When sales started to slow, I would silently dismantle their walls and fortifications, then drop off a new crate of sandbags for them to rebuild with. I was cordial throughout. You can call me a monster if you like, but the game itself casts us as DOGS. We’re mercenary cowboys in a system where friendly fire is always on, everything’s expensive, and your friends are lootable. Let the games begin.
That said, the game is just as fun to play, honestly. Once I had cleared the skies of friendly rivals, there was no better feeling than putting my ARMA 3 helicopter skills to work. My Little Bird adventures were some of the most fun I’ve had flying in a video game. The controls and dynamics were similar to ARMA 3 but with more weight and variables. Pulling off a successful hot drop or emergency landing actually feels like an accomplishment, and your team will be thanking God for having a ride that didn’t end in a fiery wreck.
In the hours since the playtest wrapped, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok have been inundated with shorts highlighting the weekend’s most cinematic and ridiculous moments. Read the comments section on any of them or one of the countless posts on gaming forums, and players will tell you: they are lost without their WARDOGS. In just a few days, with an early build of the game, WARDOGS became the indie darling of the FPS world.
I don’t have hard data for that, but the vibes speak for themselves. From Friday to Sunday, the servers were full, the voice chat was joyous, and 100-player lobbies worked together to extend their final matches for as long as possible, hoping to keep the servers alive just a little longer.
Since Sunday, I’ve tried to fill the WARDOGS-shaped hole in my heart with Squad and ARMA 3, but the emptiness remains. When the game releases on September 10th, you better believe I’ll be there. I’ll see you on the battlefield. Don’t forget to bring my lunch money.
