Coordination and roles in a crew: the lesson of Profundidad Silenciosa

A submarine is the perfect metaphor for a specialized team

Few images capture a team of highly specialized roles better than a submarine crew: every station reads a different instrument, no one can do another's job, and if they stop coordinating, the whole ship goes down — literally in the fiction, figuratively in a real company. That's the foundation of Profundidad Silenciosa, our cooperative crew game: five stations, one hull, and a constant need to talk in order to move forward.

The premise: crossing a trench undetected

In the "Nahuel Trench" scenario, a network of autonomous sonar buoys blocks the way. The submarine has to cross without being detected, find the control buoy among a field of decoys, neutralize it, and get out before the network resets. It's near-future science fiction, with no flags or real military references, but with a very concrete tension: every navigation, sonar, or power decision has to be coordinated with the others in real time.

Five stations, five incomplete views

• The Commander has the mission brief and the launch code, but can't see the technical instruments.
• The Helm controls heading, depth, and speed, but can't see the map or the sonar contacts.
• Sonar detects contacts, mines, and the clear corridor between them, but can't touch the helm.
• Engineering manages the reactor and repairs damage, but doesn't have the repair procedure (another station holds that).
• Weapons has the full damage-control manual and operates the launch tubes, but doesn't know the launch code (only the Commander has that).

No role has everything it needs to act alone. The Helm needs Sonar to call out a safe heading. Engineering needs Weapons to read out the right procedure for a specific fault. The Commander needs Sonar to confirm which signal is the real control buoy before authorizing a shot. It's asymmetric information taken to a deliberate extreme: every piece of knowledge lives in a single head, and the only way to bring it together is by talking.

Why this is different from other asymmetric-role games

We've already written about asymmetric information in Blind Operations, but Profundidad Silenciosa adds a dimension that game doesn't have: phases chain together in real time, and a late decision in one phase directly affects the next. If Sonar takes too long classifying a contact, the Helm can end up steering toward a mine without knowing it. If Engineering doesn't fix a fault in time, Weapons can run out of power to charge a tube right when the Commander needs to fire.

This trains something more specific than "communicate well": it trains prioritizing what to communicate first when several things are urgent at once, a critical skill for any team operating under real-time pressure (technical support, operations, control rooms).

The Commander's role: leading without all the technical information

An interesting design detail: the Commander, who gives the final orders (silence, attack, evasion), is precisely the role with the fewest technical instruments. They have to trust what Sonar, Engineering, and Weapons report to make a call. This mirrors an uncomfortable but common reality in organizations: the person leading doesn't always have the full technical picture, and leading well means knowing how to ask the right questions and trusting the information the team brings, not pretending to have every answer.

What to watch for in the debrief

After a session, it's worth looking at, together with the team:

• Was there a moment when someone had critical information and was slow to share it? There almost always is, and it's the most productive place to start the conversation.
• How did the team handle simultaneity? When two things are urgent at once (a fault and a suspicious contact), did the team settle on a clear priority, or did each role pull on its own thread separately?
• Did the Commander ask for confirmation before giving a critical order, or act on the first piece of information that came in?

These questions, anchored in concrete facts from the session, are worth far more than a general chat about "teamwork." If you want to go deeper on how to structure that conversation, we cover it in our guide to facilitating a good debrief.

Which teams get the most out of it

Profundidad Silenciosa works especially well for:

• Technical teams where different people manage interdependent systems (infrastructure, support, operations).
• Groups that need to practice coordination under real-time pressure, more than slow deliberation.
• Teams that have already played other titles on the platform and are looking for a challenge with more simultaneous moving parts.

With teams of 4 to 10 people, each group forms its own crew with its own scenario seed, so no two sessions play out the same way.

A typical moment in a session

A common sequence in a session: Sonar detects a contact and classifies it as a decoy, but doesn't tell the rest of the team because "it didn't seem important." Two minutes later, the Commander calls for absolute silence, assuming the path is clear, and the Helm holds the current heading without knowing that decoy sits exactly on their course. Nothing catastrophic happens yet, but the team just lost a chance to get ahead of the problem. This kind of sequence — minor information that only becomes relevant once combined with another role's decision — is at the heart of what Profundidad Silenciosa trains, and it's an excellent conversation starter for the debrief that follows.

How to get started

You can add Profundidad Silenciosa to your team's next session from the platform. If you'd rather feel what coordination between stations is like before gathering the whole crew, try it in solo mode with bots covering the remaining roles.