Hands-On with Den of Wolves - Wolf’s Rain or Wolves Reign?

Romanticised retro/future-future reigns supreme in this heist title for the ages. The query is, can the team pull it all the way off?

The recent news of “Do The Game” as well as our very own in-depth interview with Ulf Andersson means that Den of Wolves is now your new favourite game, and 10 Chambers your new favourite studio -- whether you knew that or not (and whether you like that or not). So far everything seems to be working in Ulf and co’s favour -- a successful, global preview event where media such as us got hands-on with a heist from the game, and to collective applause, mind. Support from Tencent from a financial perspective and an alignment with Unity as something of a flagship title spruiking Unity 6, giving the team more support and incentive to push things into areas not initially thought possible. And a soon-to-be-released docu-reality series designed to not only humanise the weight, pressure and stresses of game development, alongside its many highs, but to equally make 10 Chambers a household name means this studio, its game and in many ways, its ultimate gamble, are paying off.

But we all know that in gaming, the true measure of success is in the game itself, and so it’s with aplomb we tell you out of the gate that Den of Wolves is great. Excellent even.

It is a dynamic game that relies heavily on teamwork and communication. It is no corridor shooter, nor is it paint-by-the-numbers. What’s in front of you is a game that promotes lateral thinking, on-the-fly reactionary… actions, and a level of patience and fortitude in the face of adversity and ‘bad luck’ the likes of which you might not have known since your last RNG-hating Balatro poker hand. Many questions remain after our time with the game in relation to its release rollout, which will see it hit Early Access first, as well as what the wait time between major updates will be, among others, but for three-ish hours we heisted in a fantastical world built on cyberpunk and dystopian future foundations. We made actual plans of attack and engaged (and enraged) fairly smart and challenging enemies. We looted and we took in the world around us. And throughout all of this it was nothing but fun, fun, fun.

Den of Wolves

Genre: Techno-Thriller Co-Op Heist FPS
Developer: 10 Chambers
Publisher: 10 Chambers
Release Date: 2025
Classification: TBC
Author: Stephen Farrelly
Date: April 15, 2025

Best Laid Plans

For the purposes of our hands-on session, 10 Chambers presented to our group an actual floor plan of the heist space for us to physically prepare -- as a team -- what our approach would be. This was unique because it gave us perspective on the depth of challenge the studio has embedded within the game and its key objective loop. Said objective (that being a heist overall) also featured varying stages with different goals. The final one being to gather information from within the psyche of a key figure in this heist’s narrative (or “Storyline”), but in order to reach that point and its mind-bending, disorienting platforming sequence (see our “Would you like to know more?” box out for… MORE!), we had some other things we needed to tick off.

"Planning this doublecross and pulling it off is also one playable step of the executable plan overall..."

Firstly, we needed drills. Automated, robot drills, of course. To get these we needed to doublecross a head honcho hoodlum and take him and his cronies out with, you guessed it, the future (and now)’s great swarm-bot -- drones. This had already been done for the purpose of our playthrough, but planning this doublecross and pulling it off is also one playable step of the executable plan overall, and a step you’ll get to play in the game proper when it’s finally out in the wild. 

Once we had the drills it was time to deploy them against a series of smaller vaults to seek out keycards for access to an even bigger and more important vault. Not all of these held the keys and in each of the three attempts we did, the location of the keys changed. Naturally while you’re doing this, the enemy -- now alerted to our presence -- was raining down fire while our drills were also proving a little unreliable, with breakdowns occurring here and there and requiring reboots. Managing all of this was both tense and in need of a cool head to communicate and coordinate with teammates. Your loadout, attempt-to-attempt, also proved important and secondary tools such as proximity mines or energy shields are finite, meaning you had to choose your battles and rely heavily on teamwork. Spend your gear and help too early and you’ll hang yourself out to dry. This is no picnic. 

Would you like to know more?
While we talk a little about our hands-on experience with the psyche "diving" stuff, 10 Chambers has said not all of these sequences will be alike, so we could be in for some really interesting gameplay departures from shooting, looting and heist planning. The game-world here is obviously technology-driven and given the breadth of sci-fi, cyberpunk and dystopian influence, we suspect nothing is really off the table. For now, though, what we played with a trip and just a fun break from the frenetic norm!

Loot or Die

In addition to gaining the necessary components to advance your heists, you can also pick up loot for the future and your coffers along the way. There are also health and ammo refills at various junctures for the task at hand, but again these are finite and not ubiquitously shared. Each pickup was singular also, so that teamwork and coordination aspect becomes hugely important because your team is useless to you if you selfishly grabbed a health or ammo pack when someone else needed it more, and then died. The human element in this gauntlet is very real and you’ll either deal with happy little helpers, psychopathic griefers or just find yourself hoping your friends are true buddies, but it’s a gameplay system designed by the devs, but embedded by you and is wholly dynamic. 

"Carryover loot will help you upgrade your loadouts and prep for future heists, so you’ll need to work out what's most important in a specific attempt..."

The carryover loot is an interesting risk-reward element to proceedings, though. On the one hand, it’s there and you’re already in the shit, so why not, right? But. Remember that finite tools thing mentioned earlier? Well, ammo too is finite and you can (and will) run dry. But carryover loot will help you upgrade your loadouts and prep for future heists, so you’ll need to work out what's most important in a specific attempt (we want to use “run” but this isn’t strictly a roguelike, though there are elements there, but they are heist genre specific). All of this is also governed by how well you and your team are managing the enemy swarms that come in, and not all are carbon copies and as we’ve already said, they’re pretty smart. They will flank you and will use numbers on your position. It might seem like a good idea for you and your team to split up to achieve objectives more quickly, but you can come as quickly undone if the enemy decides to hit like a pile of bricks.

And then there’s the boss to worry about as well.

Boss Blind

Ahead of utilising all keys to gain access to that final vault, we were tasked with taking out a boss. Not strictly a big boss, though they’ll exist, but definitely the boss of the lot of the baddies we’d just burned through. As stated, we had three attempts at this heist in our session and only succeeded third time around, but each time we didn’t have a huge problem with the boss. But that isn’t to say he wasn’t hard. Remember, we were playing with studio handlers who helped us navigate the whole thing best and in the thick of it, also went into survival mode. What we can say is that in each of the three attempts he came out in different spots, appeared to have different tactics and was all-round menacing despite having been dispatched without too much trouble, hopefully other bosses pose an even greater challenge and threat, but the intent from the studio with him (and his ilk) was very plain to see. 

"It’s important to point out that the AI, overall, as well as the playspace itself was still telling stories on-the-fly, or peripherally to what we were actually doing..."

That said, if you find yourself out of ammo or support tools, or a player down or the like, he’ll be on you like white on rice. So we maybe got lucky with peeps who knew how best to manage him. What we will say is elevation against a singular enemy or a couple of stragglers in a game with basic verticality is definitely your friend -- but, dear reader, you already knew that, right?

In addition to the above it’s important to point out that the AI, overall, as well as the playspace itself was still telling stories on-the-fly, or peripherally to what we were actually doing. It’s as Ulf told us in our interview, 10 Chambers could have given players pages and pages of lore and exposition, or they could just have it “sit in the background” and let the player absorb it all that way. It’s obviously more realistic in that sense, but it’s also an interesting flex not to do it. We mean, it’s all there as per our interview, but 10 Chambers just wants you to play the game which is honestly really fucking cool.

The Great Diving Escape

So, we’re on our third playthrough and we’re now in the mind of our target, who was the key treasure in that main vault all along. He has a secret we need information to, but he won't give it up willy-nilly, despite being encased in Temu carbonite. So we naturally need to jump through a jumble of his thoughts and emotions in the form of floating Inception-like platforms that defy gravity because… in the mind. We actually liken it closer to the mind-fuckery stuff in Far Cry 5 with the Jacob Seed gauntlets, though, but there’s a lot of room in these for some really crazy stuff.

"It was a cool departure from feeling pinned down and with backs against the wall while rebooting 404’d robot drills..."

This instance in particular, however, was more a timed thing and not too hard (though we did get disoriented at one point and wind back up at the starting point, somehow, letting the whole team down), but it was a cool departure from feeling pinned down and with backs against the wall while rebooting 404’d robot drills. Once we’d extracted the information, the next steps are to make a classic escape via an upper story window with a dramatic leap and smash. Which, in all honesty, was a good way to end it. You need to drop your collected loot at the same extraction point and players can rally here, so it was also a fairly believable way to end a heist as that’s naturally how you’d do it if you were constantly on the move (ie, not carrying around your various loot bags etc), and that final successful jump after a couple of failed attempts really did feel pretty glorious.

It’s not perfect yet and needs some tightening across its many systems and some of the gunplay -- the boss in particular, but truth be told, Den of Wolves was a blast. We hope there’s enough content at launch and a steady cadence of drops and a fairly competitive buy-in for players, but all of that remains to be seen yet. What we can say is this has stolen our collective hearts, for now, and on setting and execution of world building and heist particulars alone, it is already a winner. Whether we take over all of Midway City, though, remains in the hands of Ulf and 10 Chambers.

About the author

Written By Stephen Farrelly
Stephen Farrelly is a veteran journalist and editor with more than two decades experience in the worlds of gaming, entertainment, lifestyle and sport under his belt. He is a proud pug dad, loves art in all forms but particularly street and tattoo culture, and is the director of Swear Jar...
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