Beyond The Wire is a new, multiplayer WW1 shooter published by Squad devs

Canadian developer Redstone Interactive has revealed Beyond the Wire, a First World War FPS that's heavy on trench warfare and supports matches of up to 100 players. It's being published by Offworld Industries, the studio behind military sim Squad, and it's coming to Steam Early Access later this year.

At Early Access launch, Beyond the Wire will include three factions (American, French, German), multiple game modes, three maps (Battle of Passchendaele, the Somme, Argonne), and plenty of weapons.

Expect a mixture of wide-open European countryside and "tight claustrophobic trenches", backed up by a detailed melee system that debut developer Redstone claims will be "more robust than anything seen in a World War 1 game to date". Players will also be able to build fortifications on the front line.

It sounds like some of the staff from Offworld will be supporting development—in a Steam post, the Squad studio said fans "might see some familiar faces over there"—but Redstone is very much a separate entity.

You can sign up for Beyond the Wire's closed alpha here. Redstone anticipates a full release sometime in 2021 or 2022, and the final version will have more maps, more factions, more weapons, and more game modes.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.