A promising start for Bulkhead's new FPS

Image: Bulkhead/Team17

Wardogs is an upcoming first-person shooter from Bulkhead, and there's a lot of hype surrounding it. It's aiming to sit in the genre niche between games such as the Battlefield and Call of Duty series, aka casual shooters, and the more hardcore, realistic offerings, such as Escape from Tarkov and Squad. And the player consensus after the latest pre-alpha closed playtest is almost universally positive.

The playtest, with just 4,000 players in total, took place across two separate play sessions on June 26–27. There were so many applicants that the devs had to monitor attendance: "If you don't show, you'll be swapped out for someone who will," reads an X post from before the event started.

There have been some behind-closed-doors playtests before, but since the player count was increased significantly for this one, there has been a lot of feedback on social media from players.

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"The movement and shooting felt really good, and the game ran great," claims YouTube creator AirwingMarine via X. "It takes all the stuff I personally love about Battlefield but also has that flare of progression and persistence to it that hooks you." Another YouTube creator, MrAtomicDuck, kept it short and sweet: "They've nailed it."

X user Aherys, who is also the game director on Beautiful Light, an upcoming horror extraction shooter, had some detailed feedback. He praised the performance, gunplay, vehicles, and the game mode, but thinks player visibility needs some work, as it's hard to spot enemies in bushes. Those visibility concerns were echoed by Shoddy-Laugh-9629 on Reddit. There are also apparently some balancing issues with the sniper rifles, and some lobbies would resort to everyone using them.

Reddit user sbargox321 explains that Wardogs is "everything I wanted Battlefield to be," adding that it "strikes the perfect balance between the casualness of Battlefield and the realism of Hell Let Loose or Squad." They went on to detail a couple of technical issues, but explained that their frame rate never dipped below 110, which is more than enough for most players. "For a pre-alpha build, I found it to be more polished than other games," they concluded.

Finally, Twitch streamer ThatFriendlyGuy had one of the highest bits of praise for the game, explaining it feels "like the good old days of gaming:"

Sounds like Bulkhead has nailed the "dad game" vibes it was aiming for, as the co-founder and CEO Joe Brammer described in an interview with Polygon earlier this month. We're yet to hear about when the next Wardogs playtest will take place, but you can sign up to be notified about it via the official website.