Pre-alpha Coming to Steam
Built around teamwork, training, communication and objective‑focused infantry combat.
In the engine
Straight from the pre‑alpha build, no mock‑ups: Unreal Engine 5.8, the A25 in a first‑person hold, the red‑earth country of Red Gum, and the new HUD. Work in progress, captured 6 October 2026.
Overview
Southern Spear is a first-person tactical shooter in the tradition of classic team‑based military shooters: realistic pacing, small teams, clear roles, and objectives that only fall to coordinated play. It is set in a fictional world inspired by Australia.
Its design philosophy is inspired by the classic America’s Army games — deliberate infantry combat, low time‑to‑kill, a deliberately limited HUD, strong communication and role discipline, and mandatory training before a specialised role opens up.
You fight across outback stations, dry creek lines and red‑earth country as a soldier of the fictional 3rd Battalion, Australian Commonwealth Regiment (3 ACR). Matches are Objective Assault: two teams fight over a chain of objectives that fall in order, round after round.
There are no loot boxes, no pay‑to‑win and no hero classes. Every weapon and every character is mechanically identical on both sides — only how they look changes, and only to the viewer.
Inspired by, not affiliated with. Southern Spear takes its design philosophy from the classic America’s Army games. It is an entirely original work: no source code, map layout, mission name, interface, audio, dialogue or artwork is copied or reused. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by or approved by America’s Army or the United States Army, and it borrows none of their marks, names or insignia.
A fictional entertainment project. Southern Spear is not endorsed, sponsored, developed or approved by the Australian Government, the Department of Defence, the Australian Defence Force or the Australian Army. All organisations, units, forces and weapons are fictional, and no map reproduces a real base, installation or operationally useful site.
Systems
These are the intended systems from the project's design documents. They are what the roadmap is building towards, not features that exist in a playable build today.
Training is a core progression system, not a tutorial. It is replayable, stores your best results, and unlocks multiplayer roles.
See the training framework in detail · See the weapons these qualifications use
Objectives are taken by holding the ring. Opposing soldiers inside contest it, so the fight comes to you.
Six separate concepts, kept apart on purpose. That separation is what stops progression collapsing into a kill counter.
Every map ships as data, not code. A layer bundles mode, time of day, weather, objectives, deployment, roles, respawn model and ticket allocation.
Train
Five modules, each granting specific roles. Leadership cannot be reached by skill alone in a firing range, and a qualification you have earned is never invalidated by a server being down.
Grants basic rifleman access
Movement, interaction, HUD, stance, communication and rules of engagement.
Grants Automatic Rifleman, Marksman
Familiarisation, controlled pairs, supported firing, reloading and fire‑mode selection. Scored.
Grants Section Support Gunner
Bipod handling, deployment, suppression and ammunition management. Scored.
Grants Medic
Navigation, observation, friendly and opposing identification, objective interaction and basic medical treatment.
Grants Fireteam Leader, Section Commander
Fireteam command, waypoint and order placement, radio procedure and objective planning.
Rifleman and Grenadier are open after Induction. Support Gunner, Marksman and Medic are limited to two per section. Fireteam Leaders and Section Commanders are limited to one per fireteam and section.
Identification training is explicit, because contextual appearance is only safe if players are trained to read silhouettes and insignia rather than colour.
Failure conditions are stated clearly before an exercise starts, and accessibility options are available throughout.
Operate
Both teams are mechanically identical. Only the presentation differs, and only per viewer.
Team One’s screen
Team One 3 ACR
Team Two MAF
Team Two’s screen
Team Two 3 ACR
Team One MAF
How you see your own team
Conventional infantry of the fictional Commonwealth Land Service.
How you see the opposing team
A fictional, competent conventional army with original red‑earth camouflage, insignia and equipment.
The swap is decided on each player’s own machine and never touches gameplay: damage, movement and hitboxes are the same for everyone. All units and forces are fictional.
Sequential or parallel objectives; attackers take, defenders hold; limited respawns or round‑based elimination.
Capture and hold tactical locations, with ticket or round‑based scoring.
Loadout
Every image here is the weapon model running in the engine, lit by the game’s own sky, with its real textures, optic and magazine. Muzzle speeds are the design figures behind each weapon’s bullet path and recoil, taken from published data for the cartridge.
Standard-issue bullpup, the weapon the infantry qualifications centre on.
The A88 with an underbarrel grenade launcher, and its own hold and reload.
Bipod-carried support gun for suppression by section.
Short flat-top carbine of the rifleman family, optic carried.
Short-stroke rail-handguard rifle of the rifleman family.
Designated marksman rifle: long barrel, large optic, precision fire.
The sidearm. Fast to draw, short in reach.
AK pattern. The standard rifle of the Murasian Armed Forces.
SVD pattern. Long-range fire for MAF marksmen.
PKM pattern. Belt-fed suppression for the MAF section.
These are presentation views of the pre‑alpha models, not gameplay captures, and final art may differ. The MAF weapons belong to the fictional Murasian Armed Forces. See the development status for where the work actually is, and the training framework for what each weapon unlocks.
Adapt
Seven original environments, at seven different stages: two in the game, two more in production, two built and being tuned, and one in early work. Layouts are designed from the gameplay brief — sightlines, cover rhythm, rotation distances — not surveyed from any real location. Every location is invented, and none reproduces a real training area or installation.
In the game
Large outback station
A 1 km landscape of open paddocks, gum‑tree lines, fences and a homestead. It is the long approach and the open ground between cover — the case the smaller maps cannot test.
In the game
Rural Australian training area
The vertical‑slice test bed: a creek bed, scrub and farm structures, built to prove two teams, faction presentation, an objective sequence, the round lifecycle and a dedicated server. Now 340 × 240 m and dressed from cleared asset packs rather than blocks — shelters, corrugated iron, sandbag sangars, barns, a windmill, wells.
In production
Urban canal district
The only map set in a built environment rather than open terrain, and the only Special Forces map. It tests close‑quarters and interior fighting at ranges Dry River deliberately rules out.
In production
Open semi‑arid range
Exists to answer one question: whether the project's engagement ranges still work past 200 m. It is the long‑sightline case Dry River caps out.
Built, being tuned
Slate quarry
A flooded slate pit converted from a studio diorama into a playable outdoor level: the showroom and its light bars stripped out, open‑day lighting and fog instead, complex collision, a rim at each side's measured edge, and a loading bay, a cutting face and spoil heaps as objectives.
Built, being tuned
Country township, urban training
An invented township laid out for close‑quarters clearing and doorway work: two streets crossing at the centre, a church square, a fenced depot compound and a park, dressed from cleared asset packs with Australian gums, grass, a windmill and water tower, kangaroos, fallen timber, sandbag nests, concrete barricades and a wooden watchtower.
In early work
Fictional high‑country crossing
A gorge crossed by a 68 m iron lattice‑girder road bridge, with a stone gatehouse on the far abutment and a playable creek bed beneath giving a second lane. The bridge, the gatehouse and the gorge are original geometry; cleared asset packs dress them.
A read‑only tool loads a map and measures it against the design rules written for Dry River: how far a player crosses open ground between cover, how long a sightline runs, how much hard cover there is against soft, whether any starting position can see an enemy starting position, and whether each team walks about as far to reach each objective. It never moves, places or saves anything. The rules were written for a hand‑built blockout and had never been measured against the built maps, so most of them fail.
Ravenshoe Crossing and Bluestone have not been audited yet. None of these figures measure
whether a map is fun, and none of them can tell whether a piece of cover is fairly
placed — that still needs people playing it. The audit also caught a defect in the spawn
tool, which had been measuring exposure against a single enemy point instead of all 64 pairs,
so every map's previous exposure figure was optimistic. The measurements come from
Docs/MAPS_PLAYABILITY_AUDIT.md; the tool is
Tools/Unreal/audit_map_playability.py.
Media
Captures from the pre‑alpha build come first, each labelled with the map, the date and the session it came from. Below them is the project’s approved title‑screen design and concept art: the intended visual direction, not gameplay.
No in‑engine captures have been published yet. When they are, they appear here, captioned with the map, the capture date and the development session, and marked as work in progress.
Only images marked In‑engine are captured from the game. Everything else in this section is title‑screen artwork or concept art produced outside the game, and is labelled as such.
Development
Everything below is read directly from the project’s own roadmap and changelog. Nothing is estimated or rounded for effect, and no completion percentage is shown because none is tracked. Southern Spear is pre‑alpha and is planned for Steam; no release date has been set.
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Roadmap
The project proves the expensive‑to‑get‑wrong parts first: networking, team presentation, authority and persistence. Art is deliberately deferred until the systems hold.
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Changelog
Every working session is recorded with what was completed, how it was tested, the risks and the next action — evidence, not narrative. The newest entry is below; the full changelog carries every session, searchable and filtered.
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Read every session, with search and category filters, on the changelog page. The log is also published as plain Markdown at data/CHANGELOG.md.
FAQ
An original, free, community‑developed Australian‑inspired tactical multiplayer first‑person shooter, coming to Steam. It is built on Unreal Engine 5.8 using the Lyra Starter Game as its foundation, and is in pre‑alpha development.
No. There is no public build and no playable release. The editor target compiles cleanly and the project is developed in internal builds, but nothing has been released for others to play.
No release date has been announced. The project publishes its phases and session log instead, and has not committed to a schedule.
No. Southern Spear is a work of fiction. It is not endorsed, sponsored, developed or approved by the Australian Government, the Department of Defence, the Australian Defence Force or the Australian Army. All units and forces are fictional, and no map reproduces a real base, installation or operationally useful site.
It is inspired by them, but it is not connected to them. Southern Spear takes its design philosophy from the classic America’s Army games — deliberate teamwork‑focused infantry combat, low time‑to‑kill, a limited HUD, radio discipline, and training that gates specialised roles.
Everything else is original. No source code, map layout, mission name, interface, audio, dialogue or artwork is copied or reused, and the project uses none of their marks, names or insignia. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by or approved by America’s Army or the United States Army, and any resemblance to official Australian or United States military material is coincidental.
Steam is the planned storefront. Development is pre‑alpha, so nothing is listed and no release date has been announced. Announcements will be posted on this site and in the Discord first.
Minimum and recommended specifications have not been measured yet, so none are published. They will be set by testing the game itself and listed on the Steam page. What is already fixed by the engine and the project’s own render settings:
In practice that points to a DirectX 12 graphics card with 8 GB or more of video memory, and an SSD, as is usual for Unreal Engine 5 games. Treat anything more precise as a guess until the numbers are measured.
The project is being developed as free to play, with no loot boxes and no pay‑to‑win mechanics. Donations are not currently being accepted.
Unreal Engine 5.8, with the Lyra Starter Game vendored in as the multiplayer foundation. Unreal Engine is a trademark of Epic Games, Inc.
This website publishes the roadmap, the current status, and a session‑by‑session changelog generated from the project's own documents. The full log lives on its own changelog page, searchable and filtered. The website and its published documentation live in a public GitHub repository, and there is a Discord server for discussion.
Not at present. The game repository is private, and the game itself is not open source. The website and the documentation published alongside it are in a public repository.
Community testing has not yet been announced or scheduled. The roadmap includes a phase for online hardening and load testing, and the Discord is where testing calls would be posted first.
Follow
There is nothing to download yet. The honest way to follow the project is to read the log and join the conversation.
Every session, with test results, defects and the next action.
Talk to the team, follow development and hear about playtests when they open.
This site and its published documentation are in a public repository.
Southern Spear is pre‑alpha. There is no release to download. Donations are not being accepted. When a verified build exists, this page will state its version and date from the release metadata.
