WARDOGS Wiki

Release

10 Sep 2026Steam Early Access

Developer

BULKHEADThe Turing Test, Battalion

Publisher

Team17

Players

100Three teams

Price

US$39.99$49.99 Supporter Edition

Platform

PC / SteamPS5 & Xbox planned

What is WARDOGS?

WARDOGS is a large-scale first-person shooter built by BULKHEAD, the British studio behind The Turing Test and the Battalion shooters, and published by Team17. Its pitch is unusually specific for the genre: rather than two teams trading a chain of capture points, WARDOGS drops one hundred players split across three rival factions onto a single enormous map and gives them exactly one thing to fight over.

That thing is the Control Zone — a 2×2 km square that spawns at a randomised position inside a 16×16 km battlefield. Whichever team has the most players standing inside the zone scores. The first team to 100 points wins the match. The mode is openly modelled on King of the Hill, and BULKHEAD has published a developer video tracing the design back to that lineage.

Two systems make it play unlike the games it superficially resembles. The first is money. Every player starts a match with $10,000 and re-equips from their balance before each life — weapons, armour, utilities, and vehicles all have a price tag. Cash is earned by helping the team: reviving allies, contesting and holding the zone, ferrying squads, running supplies. Kills pay too, but they are not the only, or even the fastest, income. Read the cash economy guide for how that shapes the opening ten minutes.

The second is that the battlefield changes shape. Players can deploy a forward operating base anywhere on the map and build mortar stations, anti-air emplacements and sniper towers; tanks and rocket launchers can blow holes through the buildings other players are sheltering in. BULKHEAD has been candid that this is deliberately capped — the studio tested unrestricted destruction internally, watched it flatten an entire map within an hour, and concluded that it made level design meaningless. See building and destruction.

WARDOGS gameplay: the core loop in 60 seconds

1. Buy your life Spend from your cash balance at the buy screen. A rifle, a vest and a medical kit is a cheap, productive opening. There is no class to pick — what you buy is who you are.
2. Get to the zone The Control Zone is somewhere inside 256 km² of terrain. Walking is slow; a bought light vehicle or a ride from a helicopter pilot is how squads actually arrive.
3. Fight two enemies, not one Both other factions want the same square. Pushing hard into one of them exposes your flank to the other, which is the entire point of the three-team format.
4. Get paid for team play Revives, zone presence, transport and supply runs generate cash. A player who only hunts kills earns more slowly than one who also picks team-mates up.
5. Reinvest Turn the balance into something heavier — anti-armour, a forward operating base near the zone, an APC, eventually a tank or a helicopter.
6. Hold to 100 Points tick to whichever team has bodies in the zone. First to 100 takes the match.

What it looks like

Start here if you are new

The three factions

Each of the three teams in a match represents one faction. BULKHEAD's setting is Kolchia, a fictional Eastern European region of war-torn industrial mountains, and the war is over PV-1, a rare resource the studio says has fuelled decades of Eurasian conflict. Nothing announced suggests the factions differ mechanically — they are identity and colour-coding, not asymmetric stat blocks. Full detail on the factions page.

Full wiki index

Frequently asked questions