UNAUTHD

What it is

UNAUTHD is asymmetric tactical espionage — the same conflict, played from both ends of it. You lead a squad of Noughted defending Nought resources against infiltration. Then you lead a squad of UnderNoughts, taking shadow contracts to pillage or destroy the very things you were protecting.

The asymmetry runs deeper than objectives. It is built into how each side sees. The Noughted play in true first person — a full body rig, no floating arms, sight limited to what the character can physically see. The UnderNoughts play in third person, with a spatial awareness the defenders simply do not have.

That is deliberately the wrong way round. The intruder is normally the vulnerable one, feeling their way through hostile space. Here it is the defender who is blind in their own building, and the raider who can see round the corner. Holding ground stops being the safe position.

The two sides do not play the same game. UnderNoughts are mobility-first — closing distance, disrupting, getting out. Noughted hold and control, backed by an apparatus the raiders have to work around rather than outfight: watching systems, automated response, an escalation that builds the longer you stay.

And the balance moves. A site’s defences do not start at full strength. Early on the way in is soft, and every second spent inside spends that advantage down. The raid that goes clean is the one that was already over before the site woke up.

Who it’s for

If you have ever loved a game and spent most of your time with it thinking about the one thing it got wrong, this is aimed at you.

It is assembled out of that impulse. Rainbow Six Siege for gadgetry. ARC Raiders for the pull of a mission-based co-op run. Nosgoth for asymmetric combat — a game that is not around any more and left a gap nothing has properly filled since. There are plenty more, and they all put something in.

The through-line is not homage though. Wherever a game I loved got something wrong, the fix went in here.

Rats are the clearest example. The player who hangs back, stays hidden and cashes in on everyone else’s fight is close to invisible until it is far too late to do anything about it. In UNAUTHD, rats are made obvious. Play that way if you want — but everyone else gets to know about it.

No fixed side

There is no fixed side. Contracts come in and you choose which to take — defend the Nought, or move against it. Your stance is never declared outright; it accumulates from the jobs you accept and the ones you turn down.

That is what makes the campaign non-linear in a way that has teeth. Choices carry consequences, and the Nought remembers where you have stood. Work against it often enough and the legitimate side of the board stops opening doors for you.

Getting caught is not a fail screen either. You come out the other side owing somebody, and the debt follows you into the next job.

Solo, co-op and PvP — all three, from the ground up

It is built to be played however there are people to play it with. Solo, co-op and PvP are not three modes added in sequence — the game was designed around all three from the start. AI can take any teammate slot there is nobody to fill, and difficulty scales to the squad you actually turned up with.

That is a deliberate hedge against the thing that kills games like this. UNAUTHD does not stop working because the playerbase is small, or because it is three in the morning and you are the only one online.

Anatomy of a contract

To write. What a single job looks like moment to moment — squad command, objectives, and how a contract succeeds or falls apart.

Audio

To write. Worth taking time over: it is the reason this studio exists. Tension, signal and silence — what the player hears, how detection becomes a listening problem, and how the two perspectives are mixed differently.

Status

Prototyping since December 2025. Refactor started June 2026. First small-scale playtest soon.

The devlog below is where progress gets written up as it happens.