Your first match, explained.

The one rule that changes how you play

Up to 100 players, split across three teams, fight over one randomised 2 × 2 km Control Zone inside a 256 km² map. Points go to the team with the most players inside that zone, and the first team to 100 points wins. Nothing about that sentence rewards you for shooting. It rewards you for being there, and for putting teammates there.

Your $10,000 is a decision, not a starting kit

Your journey starts with $10,000. Each life, weapons, gear, utility and vehicles are bought from your current balance. Cash carries between matches, which means a purchase is a commitment rather than a per-round reset — and losing an expensive vehicle is a loss you take with you. BULKHEAD’s own framing is that spending big at the right moment can turn a battle and pay for itself.

There is a job list, and it is published

The studio names the roles instead of hiding them: close-quarters combat, sniping and spotting, medic, building, demolitions, transport, logistics and artillery. It also names the paid actions — reviving squadmates, transporting friendlies to the zone, controlling the objective. If you are new, that list is the most useful thing on the store page: it tells you there is a way to be useful that does not require winning duels.

• Reviving squadmates pays
• Driving teammates to the zone pays
• Holding the objective pays
• Chasing the Hot Zone is described as paying double

Turn your microphone on

Voice chat here is local and proximity-based, and BULKHEAD treats it as part of the design rather than a feature it tolerates — its own description says every moment is player-driven and tied together with local voice chat, for talking tactics or for talking to the enemy. Practically: test your mic before the match, not during it. A player who cannot be heard is missing a mechanic, not just an option.

Plan your first life as reconnaissance

Editorial preparation, and we say that plainly because nobody at this site has played the launch build. Treat the opening life as a look around rather than a performance. Find the zone, note the route, agree a regroup point with whoever you are with, and buy the cheapest thing that lets you do a job you understand. You will make better spending decisions on your second life than you can possibly make on your first.

What you will read elsewhere that nobody can back up

Starter loadouts with exact prices. Payout figures for revives and spots. Best-weapon rankings. BULKHEAD has released no price list of its own, no payout table and no weapon statistics — though a beta vendor screen has since surfaced prices for 31 of the 34 weapons it lists, which our database records as observed rather than official, and which the outlet that recorded it calls unreliable for the shipped game. Payout figures and weapon rankings you will see quoted have no such record behind them at all: sites carrying them are estimating, and the estimates disagree with each other. Read them as opinion, not as a build order.

After your first few matches

Ask what actually stopped you contributing — the route, the equipment, or nobody knowing where anyone was — and change one of the three. The mode is stable enough that a single change per session is measurable; changing everything at once is not.

Common questions