Inspired by the Project Reality modification for Battlefield 2, the game will place its players in a realistic environment and encourage them to work together. Doing so tends to be an excellent way to build an immersive and visceral combat atmosphere. To those familiar with PC shooters, the best way to describe this would be as a middle ground between the Battlefield and Arma series.

Built from the ground up in the Unreal Engine 4, Squad pits teams of up to 50 players against each other in white knuckle modern day combined-arms combat scenarios, with both conventional and unconventional forces. The players dictate how the scenarios unfold with base-building and interactive environments, intuitive squad command and management tools and large-scale warfare where strategy and leadership are just as important as a quick trigger finger.

The battlefield of Squad is built around organized teams using both the environment and the assets available within the ga6me to wage a tactical battle against an opposing team. From role organization to base building to vehicle mechanics, teamwork amplifies the effectiveness of the tools at your disposal. Supported by intuitive positional VOIP and navigation systems players will be able to maintain situational awareness and seamlessly interact with others. Dedicated chain of command channels and localized voice will be an effective tool for communication and organization.

Over the last month between the release of Alpha 7 and features for Alpha 8, the development team of Squad has been working long hours to update and optimize the game while bringing the big boom into battle with Improvised Mobile Rocket Artillery attached to technicals and trucks, Recoilless SPG-9 rocket systems, and the FGM-148 Javelin Anti-Tank Guided Missile. These anti-vehicle weapons systems are being brought in to prepare for the future deployment of a greater number and greater variety of armored vehicles. Talking of which, the first reveals of the British Armed Forces faction are released with this update, making good on one of the Kickstarter stretch goals to include the UK in the core Squad gameplay experience as the fifth faction in game. Also shown off just this weekend from the Squad Modding Scene comes the WWII mod Post Scriptum, which will include the British and German WWII factions in Western Front maps.

Iterative Optimizations, Stability and Improvements have been the name of the game as the team moves towards Alpha 8. Highlights of the optimizations include a near complete rebuild of the animation system vastly reducing CPU usage, while also adding a new crawling animation to the mix. Multiplied by the current player limit of 72 players, the savings in a full server look to be very promising. Updates to the menu UI, in game UI, in game map UI, radial menu UI, Server browser UI are centered and focused to bring a highly optimized, unified user experience across the entire game. Another highlight is server browser asynchronously updating, to allow a much faster startup and server selection experience, and also a large number of deep engine optimizations, with a special recognition to the developers at Coconut Lizard who host a blog full of low level Unreal Engine optimizations.

Squad Alpha v8 will upgrade to the cutting edge Unreal Engine 4.13, and will see the introduction of new lighting system that makes use of photographic skyboxes. Offworld Industries LTD has brought on several new environment artists as the Eastern European theatre is fleshed out for current and future maps in the game and made available in the Squad Modding SDK.

Squad is currently available on Steam Early Access.

Squad seeks to establish a culture of camaraderie that is unparalleled in competitive multiplayer shooters. This is a game where you can work together and coordinate with your team: players from around the world, often that you just met.

Squad will support up to 100 players in competitive multiplayer. This broad scope serves to immerse the player into a rich battle environment filled with challenges and opportunities. With teams of sufficient size, some players can perform supporting roles while leaving enough front-line combatants to provide fun and challenging gameplay across the full expanse of the battlefield.

A wide variety of support vehicles and aircraft will be included. Tanks and close support helicopters will spearhead a team’s assault into enemy lines while transport helicopters and APCs will provide much needed logistics and transportation support.

Commanders and squad leaders will be given the ability to shape the battlefield through construction of defensive and offensive fortifications as well as control of battlefield planning and supplemental combined arms assets. Coupled with this, spawn dynamics will be affected by occupation of territories and level of supply each objective is receiving. Organized control of the battlefield will ensure a properly supported supply structure and pave the way for a strategic victory.

It’s all about teamwork.

Key Features:

• Massive Online 50 vs 50 Squad-Based Combined Arms Warfare
• Large scale maps up to 8km^2. (currently working with 2km and 4km maps)
• Organic and Emergent Gameplay, this won’t be a linear shooter
• Maps based on Geographic Information System satellite data of real world locales
• True First Person (aka ‘body awareness’) character models, there won’t be walking gunheads here. High quality models and complex animations systems.
• Built in Voice Over IP using the best codecs available, with attenuated localized, intra-squad radio, and inter-squad command radio communications.
• Simulated damage models and simulated ballistics
• NO grinding rewards system and no dress up dolls
• Showcase Deployables and Base Building which no other military FPS has.
• Real world current time period armaments using highly accurate modelling
• Teamwork oriented gameplay that doesn't require a clan or private server to fully realize the potential of the gameplay.
• The creation, defense, destruction and resupply of chained spawn positions in an overlapping and always fluid emergent chessboard designed in our maps.
• A very open development team with excellent community communication, and preparations in progress for mod support near retail release.
• Essentially an "everything" game. Infantry/Logistics/Air Combat/CAS/Armor Warfare