Making Contact: Building an Ops Room Game

The podcast behind Contact: Wait Out, an ops room command game. We're Tom and Ryan, a two-person indie studio trying to make our first game, and this is the whole journey, out loud. The wins, the playtests that fall apart, the things we didn't know we didn't know, and whether two people can actually pull this off. The game puts you in the chair of an army operations officer in a small patrol base. Your platoon is out on the ground and you are not. Everything you know arrives late and incomplete, over the radio, a drone feed and a sand table you keep up to date by hand. You give the orders. They fight the battle. Tom did that job for real. Ryan has spent years building military simulation in Unreal Engine. Alongside the build, we talk to people who did the jobs the game asks you to command: what the work was really like, and what a game about it must never get wrong. New episodes every fortnight. Follow the build and watch the playtests at contactwaitout.com. Contact: Wait Out is a work of fiction. The theatre, places, units, people and operations in the game are invented.