Shadow Zone

Below the surface there is a layer where the water turns cold and sound bends away from it. Under it lies the shadow zone: a submarine there is almost silent to the ships above. Shadow Zone is submarine warfare fought by sound, seen as a cutaway of the sea. LISTEN BEFORE YOU STRIKE A contact starts as a bearing and a guess. Hold it and it sharpens. Ping, and you know where it is; so does it. Go deep, go slow, slip under the layer and let them pass overhead. THREE THEATRES DEEP: command a submarine. Strike a defended harbour off Crimea, hunt in sea caves, slip through the fire and ice of Jan Mayen. SURFACE: command a frigate, its towed array streaming below the layer, and hunt the submarine that hunts you. SKY: fly an anti-submarine helicopter, lower your dipping sonar and drop on what you hear. A DEFENDED COAST Off Crimea the ships lie moored behind a torpedo net. Frigates and a corvette patrol, hydrophones listen, batteries watch from the cliffs and mines wait in the approaches. Torpedoes run on their wires; missiles rise from the deep, split up and arrive together. A REAL SEABED The Black Sea off Crimea is built from real depth data: its shelf, its slopes and its bays are where they are. ATMOSPHERE Play it with headphones: your crew's voices, the ping and its echo, every sound from where it comes, and your own heartbeat. Shadow Zone is an experiment, not a finished game: weapons are unlimited for now. Seabed data: EMODnet Bathymetry Consortium, EMODnet Digital Bathymetry (DTM), emodnet.ec.europa.eu. From Deep Byte Studios.

• Submarine against submarine, fought by sound • Three theatres: the deep, the surface and the sky, each with its own seas • Listen, hide under the layer, and strike before you are heard Shadow Zone is an experiment, not a finished game