Degraded overhead surveillance view of compounds, fields and tracks

In development for PC

Command what you cannot see.

The fog of war is real. Your platoon is in contact and all you have is a radio, a bad drone feed and a map you plot by hand. You hear it late. You see it badly. You decide anyway.

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AO NET - LAST TRAFFIC --:-- AGO

Station 02 / The brief

RECEIVING...

The tension is not in the firefight. It is in the dead air before the radio comes back.

Contact: Wait Out is a command game. Not a strategy game. Not a shooter. You are the operations officer. Your platoon is out on the ground and you are not. Everything you know about the battle arrives through a radio, a drone with a narrow view, a helmet camera pointing at a wall, a chat log and a sand table you keep up to date by hand.

Your decisions are good or bad based on what you knew at the time. Not what was true.

  1. 01

    One step removed

    You never control a soldier. You never see the battle cleanly.

  2. 02

    Decisions with consequence

    Speed or caution. Where the helicopter lands. Which route the patrol takes.

  3. 03

    The room is a character

    Power cuts. Incoming fire. A radio that dies mid-sentence.

  4. 04

    Never the same twice

    Procedural ground and an enemy network that learns your habits.

  5. 05

    Realism as texture

    Correct procedure and correct language, learned by doing.

Station 03 / Screen wall

Two monitors. Five sources.

The choice of what not to watch is yours. Make it again every time the situation moves.

Degraded overhead surveillance view of compounds, fields and tracks
DRONE EO--:--:--SIGNAL -----
MONITOR 1
Degraded helmet camera view down a narrow mud-walled alley
HELMET 1 SECTION--:--:--SIGNAL -----
MONITOR 2

Nothing is rationed. Everything is degraded. The helmet camera shows you nothing useful exactly when you most want it to.

Station 04 / Sand table

The sand table can be wrong.

It is your picture of the battle, built by hand from what you were told. The game never tells you it is wrong until the review.

PICTURE1400

At 1400, the table shows 1 SECTION JUST REPORTED, 2 SECTION JUST REPORTED, PL HQ JUST REPORTED.

9101112131415161718192021222324WADIIRRIGATION DITCHTREE LINE
1 SECTIONJUST REPORTED
2 SECTIONJUST REPORTED
PL HQJUST REPORTED
Reading the tableSolid frame: reported to youDashed frame: your own assumptionBlue rectangle: own forcesRed diamond: enemy
GROUND TRUTH

Ground truth is only ever shown in the after action review.

Station 05 / The nets

There is no headset.

Every net is a radio set on a bench, with a speaker, a handset and a signaller. To talk, you cross the room. While you are answering the company commander on one net, the platoon is still talking on the other, behind you.

Pick up a handset. You can only attend to one.

AO NET
AO NETBATTERY / POWER

[Contact report. Wait out.]

TRANSMITTING
HIGHER NET
HIGHER NETBATTERY / POWER

[Company passes a warning from a neighbouring patrol base]

You never lose awareness of a net. You lose the ability to attend to it.

Station 06 / The orders

You give the orders. They fight the battle.

You command the platoon and everything the base can bring to bear: the mortars, the drone, the quick reaction force, the helicopter. You do not aim a rifle or choose a fire position. The platoon commander on the ground has his own judgement, and his sections carry out your intent as they see it, with what they can see. Stay silent too long and he will act without you.

Yours

The plan. The route. The pace. The reserve. What to ask for, and when. What to watch, and what to ignore.

Theirs

The fire positions. The fight itself. What they report, and what they leave out. What they do when you say nothing.

The mission comes first. Bringing everyone home comes a very close second.

Some days you will not manage both.

Where this goes

It starts with one platoon and one room. The seat is built to scale: a company's worth of patrol bases, a battle group headquarters in the desert, a strike operations room in a hangar. Bigger rooms, more nets, further from the fight.

Later tiers are ambitions, not promises. The first release is the platoon.
Empty, worn operations room with radios, monitors, maps and a sand table

Station 07 / The room

The room is a character.

The ops room is a source of pressure, not a menu screen.

01

Indirect fire

A warning, then impacts. Helmet on, hard cover, then account for your people and rebuild the picture.

02

Power cut

The screens and the chat die together. The radios drop to battery. Someone has to walk to the generator.

03

Comms failure

A net goes quiet and you do not know whether that is the radio or the patrol.

04

Casualty in the room

Someone in the base is hit. Treat them, or task the medic, and keep the net running.

Station 08 / The platoon

The roster stays on the wall.

Every soldier has a name. Consequences are permanent. There is no reload and no retry. When you lose someone, the name changes state on the board and stays on the wall.

NAMEROLESTATE
Lt AshworthPlatoon CommanderFit
Sgt MullenPlatoon SergeantFit
Cpl Treharne1 Section CommanderFit
LCpl Okafor1 Section 2ICWounded
Pte DunmoreRiflemanFit
Cpl Whitlock2 Section CommanderFit
LCpl Brannigan2 Section 2ICFit
Pte SayerRiflemanKilled
Cpl Hendry3 Section Commander (QRF)Fit
Pte MarlowRiflemanFit
Pte CastellanMedicFit
Pte RuddSignallerFit

What you command

Five missions

Framework patrol. Deliberate clearance. React to contact. IED find and clearance. CASEVAC.

The reserve

One section waits at the base as your quick reaction force. Committing it is the decision that leaves you with nothing.

No status bars

Water, ammunition and fatigue are real for every soldier. You never see a number. You hear the platoon sergeant's judgement, in his words, when he chooses to give it.

Your voice

Pick up the handset and speak. Voice is optional, and everything you can say has a button.

An enemy that learns

Use the same track at the same time every day and you will find out why that was a mistake.

The review

Three tracks against one clock: what happened, what you believed, and what was lost on the way to you.

In development. Features describe the intended first release and may change.

The people behind the room

Made by two people. One of them has sat in this seat.

Portrait of Maz
MAZ

Maz

Design and military realism

Over a decade in the British Army, regular and reserve, including a deployment to Helmand Province, Afghanistan, as an operations officer. The room in this game, the pressure in it and the silence on the net are drawn from that. He is the game's designer and the final word on how it really works.

Portrait of Razak
RAZAK

Razak

World, art and engine

Builds everything you will see through the feeds and everything you can touch in the room. Co-founded Mercury Arts and worked with Offworld Industries on the relaunch of Post Scriptum.

Between them they have more than a decade in defence training and simulation, most of it in Unreal Engine. Contact: Wait Out is the game they wanted to exist.

The theatre, the units and the people in the game are invented. The room is not.

Station 09 / Report for duty

Report for pre-deployment training.

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