The German game studio Crytek returns to the scene with its upcoming western survival-horror game Hunt: Showdown. As at January 31st the closed alpha took place, we finally got some more information about the game and how it plays.
Who is Hunting Whom?
Hunt: Showdown originally started as a four player co-op third-person shooter, known as Hunt: Horrors of the Gilded Age. Well, this changed as now you are either playing as duo or get a random player assigned as your partner. They also changed from third-person to the first-person perspective.
In Hunt: Showdown you take the role of a hunter, whose job is to find clues on the map to get a lead on the boss monster, which at the current state is a the butcher or a giant spider. However, you are not the only team trying to find and kill these and they will do everything to stop you. Either by killing you on sight, or by waiting patiently for you to do the dirty work and claim the bounty for themselves afterwards. Well, if you think that doesn’t sound stressful enough there are also zombie NPC’s walking around.
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As you are not only hunting but also get hunted, the environment plays a huge role. While walking around scared birds will fly away from you and dogs will bark, alerting other players. In addition, gun shots will attract others as well. When you have managed to kill the boss you will have to wait till its corpse is banished to hell, allowing other players to catch onto you. When it’s done you will need to collect the bounty and quickly move to one of the exit points.
Each time you end a game you will get a certain amount of cash and experience, depending if you got the bounty or not. If you die during the match you will lose your hunter and equipment permanently. So, you have to hire a new one and buy him some new weapons.
The Closed Alpha
A closed alpha for a game always happens for a reason, mostly to try out how the game performs when multiple players are playing it. In addition it’s a way to get feedback from the community. As no alpha game is perfect, you can’t expect the same from Hunt: Showdown. When taking a look on the forums, players where experiencing connection issues, long loading times and poor optimization due the fact that there aren’t many graphics settings. These problems often occur at this stage, so it’s not a surprise that the developers are working on it. While it might not be a bug, some players were not too fond of the fact that your partner can kill you. The inability to see how many players are still alive might be a problem to some players, to others it adds to the constant fear in a match.
If you wonder how a match goes, below you will see the pre-alpha gameplay that got shown at the E3.
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As Hunt: Showdown is still in development you are able to follow their progress on bigger updates on their roadmap. If you have signed up for the closed alpha but you havent got a key yet, don’t worry as there are still more waves incoming. So keep tuned as the developers mentioned they will reveal the price and date of the early access soon.
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