Introducing Wavefront: Vanguard

Update, October 2026

This is the first devlog post, written when the game was a prototype. A lot has landed since: missions, the Arctic and Riverland maps, map discovery and much more. See the devlog for the latest, or The Game for where it stands now.

This is the first entry in the devlog for Wavefront: Vanguard, a low-poly, combined-arms real-time strategy game about seeing first, striking first, and holding the line on land, at sea and in the air.

The idea

Most RTS games treat vision as a circle around each unit. In Wavefront: Vanguard, an enemy only exists for you while one of your detectors actually holds it, whether that's a pair of eyes, a radar, a sonar, a magnetic sensor or a laser designator. Each of those has its own physics, range limits, blind spots and counters:

• Radar sees far, but it reveals itself and it can be jammed.
• Submarines hide from everything except sonar and magnetometers.
• Hills cast real radar shadows.
• At night, eyes go dark unless the unit carries thermal optics.

Every detector on your side and your allies' side feeds one shared, fused picture. Winning means building a better picture than the enemy, then hitting what it shows you.

Where it stands

The game is a playable prototype today. In place so far:

• Four game modes: Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Domination, and a Persistent World that saves between sessions.
• The full match flow, from a lone HQ and two engineers up to shipyards, airfields and SAM batteries.
• The unit roster across land, sea and air: tanks, bridge layers, ballistic launchers, frigates, submarines, carriers, fighters, gunships and drones.
• Sensor fusion, with coverage layers painted straight onto the terrain, including radar shadows and jammer cones.
• Vision modes: night vision, thermal and a radar scope.
• Procedural maps: islands, archipelagos and straits in temperate or desert biomes.
• AI commanders that only know what their own sensors detect.
• Multiplayer over Steam or LAN for up to 8 players.

Automated playtests run the major systems and capture screenshots of each one, which is where every image on this site comes from.

What's next

• Balance tuning
• Audio
• A real multi-account Steam test

Progress updates will land here as they happen. See The Game for a fuller tour, or the media page for more screenshots.