Under the Wire

Under the Wire

Berlin 1961–1989

A strategy game about leading a secret network in West Berlin that helps people escape through the Wall – through sewers, tunnels and borrowed passports.

Early version 0.5.0 – PC – One player

You are the leader of the network, and you never act yourself. You choose who leads each cell, who digs and who carries the papers, where the money goes and who gets to know what. Everything you know comes second hand: a few lines from a cell leader, late, coloured by who wrote them – and sometimes not true.

Every way out is also a way in.

The case, from the first week to the file

Five moments from the first chapter, Berlin 1961, as they look in the game.

  1. The week's panel beside the map: Wedding – Bernauer Straße, decision 1 of 3, Bernauer Straße manhole is ready. Paul writes, 28.8.61: “The way is clear, and the Lenz family (Hanna, Peter, Anna and Max) can come.” Under Go tonight and Wait a week stand who goes, the time and the eyes it draws.

    Week 4 – the decision

    The cells work to standing orders. Each week brings only the few decisions that need you, each a choice between two things you want.

    Under every option stands what it costs: who goes, how long it takes and how many eyes it draws. Here Paul writes that the way under Bernauer Straße is clear.

  2. The map of Wedding and Kreuzberg with the Wall in ink. Beside the cells, pencilled notes: Ackerstraße storm drain, ready – Erika, 2 weeks ago; Köpenicker Straße sewer – Margot, 2 weeks ago; Schillingbrücke outfall, struck through. Red rings around the two cells.

    Week 13 – the word from the East

    Everything on the map comes from someone. Every mark carries who said it and how long ago: the storm drain is ready, says Erika, two weeks ago.

    The map shows what the network believes, not what is true. A guard post can go up in a night, and a cell leader can be wrong, or careful, or lying.

  3. The night of 4 September 1961 at the Bernauer Straße manhole. A line of stages – into the shaft, under the Wall, across – with a red cross at under the Wall, and three hours until dawn. Paul's notes, each in German in his hand with the typed transcript beneath: Unten. Wasser bis zum Knie. Unter der Mauer. Wir gehen langsam. Wir warten im Schacht. Kalt.

    The night

    When a way is ready, you follow the crossing hour by hour in the cell leader's notes: the German as Paul scrawled it in the shaft, the transcript typed beneath.

    Your orders are three: carry on, wait an hour, or abort. Every danger shows a sign the hour before – if someone sees it, and passes it on.

  4. The card for Margot Seidel's cell in Kreuzberg – Spree, with a photo of each member. Margot Seidel, chief, nurse in Kreuzberg, cautious – strained. Heinz Albers, guide, retired railwayman: literal and steady, says Margot. Ingrid Wolf, seamstress: reliable and steady, says Margot. Beside each member the orders make chief, sideline, confront, make guide and move to Klaus's cell.

    Week 7 – the cell

    Every resource is a person. A cell is a leader and the people she vouches for, each with a name, a face, a trade and a few things they know.

    What you learn about them, you learn from her. You can make one of them chief or guide, move them, set them aside or confront them – on her word.

  5. The Stasi file after the chapter: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, Operativer Vorgang „Kanal“, a network smuggling people across the border to West Berlin, opened 14.8.61, closed 6.8.62. Five photos clipped to the file, each stamped with an IM code name; the photos and the names are blacked out, as in a released file. A list of persons with the dates the Stasi named them, arrested them or heard of them under interrogation. In the margin a red note, You named no one, above blacked-out lines.

    Afterwards – the file

    When the chapter ends you read what became of everyone in it, and you are asked who the informer was.

    Then the Stasi file opens: what they believed, when, and from whom. Only then do you learn what was true – and how early they knew.

No game over

Under the Wire is a serious game. There is no score per person brought across and no game over: aborting in time is a success, and a mistake falls on people you know by name. The events of the time are the inspiration, but every character in the game is invented.

Status

Version 0.5.0 is an early version of the first chapter: Berlin from the autumn of 1961 to the summer of 1962, a city of sectors along the new Wall, a handful of cells, three ways across – sewers, tunnels and false passports – and an informer somewhere in the network. The full campaign is planned in four chapters, from the Wall going up to the night it opened.

Not available for download yet.

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