Running a Type VII U-boat together
Wolfpack puts your group inside a German Type VII U-boat during World War II. The game stays in first person the whole time, and you interact directly with valves, levers, and instruments to operate the boat. The U-boat is fully operational: you can run the diesel engines and electric motors, work the dive planes and rudders, manage ballast tanks, trim tanks, and air vents, and use the periscopes, torpedo data computer, hydrophone, deck gun, and anti aircraft gun. Voice tubes and intercoms let you talk across the boat, so splitting up stations and calling out what you see is how the crew stays coordinated.
Playing with your group
Online co-op is the main way to play. One or more crews can operate one or several U-boats at once, and crews can talk to each other over radio using real time, enigma encrypted morse code. Missions are based on iconic events from different stages of German U-boat warfare. The current mode, Skirmish, tasks the crew with attacking and destroying an escorted convoy of ships in an open sea battle, then escaping undetected. Skirmish runs peer to peer with one player hosting. Solo play with bots is also included if you want to learn the stations on your own.
What to know before starting
Wolfpack is in Early Access, so systems and content are still being worked on. The developers are currently building a large update that rewrites the game's systems to support new game modes, dedicated servers, PVP, and open world gameplay. That update will add Career mode, an open world mode with progress saved between sessions, split into chapters covering 1939 to 1945, starting with the first chapter. It will also bring manual navigation, more enemy unit types, and a versus mode where one team plays Flower class corvettes defending a convoy against U-boats. The corvette is still in an alpha stage with many systems missing. Skirmish will remain as it is today. After that, the plan includes player run dedicated servers, new character models, a new U-boat damage model with flooding, manual torpedo reloading, a mission editor, U-boat upgrades, and new enemy ships.