Scavengers: Everything we know about Midwinter’s PvEvP battle royale
Midwinter Entertainment’s debut title Scavengers is a free-to-play battle royale with some twists: not only do you need to worry about other players, but you’ll also need to be wary of the dangers of the game’s frigid winter environment. Deadly groups of scavenger cannibals, hordes of zombie-like monsters, various forms of wildlife, and the freezing weather all stand between you and the dropship that you need to be on before it skyrockets into orbit.
Here’s everything you need to know about Scavengers, including in-depth gameplay details, what you can expect from the game’s progression systems, release date information, and more.
Scavengers: Development and reveal
During the reveal, fans also learned that the studio behind Scavengers, Midwinter Entertainment, was founded by and consists of several ex-343 Industries developers that worked on the Halo series. Some notable names include former studio head and creative director Josh Holmes and executive producer Mary Olson.
Scavengers: Story and setting
Source: Midwinter Entertainment
Survivors often take drop pods down to the surface of Earth and brave its dangers to collect salvage and other valuables from the remains of society. However, other survivors often try and take them down so that they can claim the loot for themselves. This forms the narrative context behind Scavengers’ gameplay.
Scavengers: Gameplay and presentation
Source: Midwinter Entertainment
The first are the Outlanders, which are well-coordinated human scavengers that use cover and flanking to pressure you. Then, there’s the Scourge, which are animalistic in nature and rush you directly in large numbers. In the later stages of each match, minibosses and bosses from these factions will spawn as well. Killing these enemies is a serious challenge, but doing so rewards you with lots of good resources and datapoints.
There’s also wildlife, which includes deer, rabbits, wolves, and bears. There is Scourge-infected wildlife, and these animals are harder to kill and do more damage compared to their normal counterparts. Notably, killing wildlife is a good way to get food to keep your stamina up (you can also occasionally find food while looting abandoned structures).
Beyond killable threats, there’s the weather, which slowly freezes you over the course of the match and will eventually kill you if you don’t periodically warm up by seeking out fires. Roaming storms, in particular, are very deadly since they immediately extinguish all fires in their area of effect and hasten how quickly you start to freeze. Being in the storm does make it difficult to be spotted, however, so players in good shelter or equipped with thermal boosters may find it worthwhile to intentionally stay inside the storm to hide from opposing squads. Perimeter storms that shrink the playable areas of the map are even deadlier, though, and players will die very quickly if they get caught in them.
Scavengers puts you in control of one of seven characters in a third-person view, and each team is made up of three players. Everyone in the match has shields that can be upgraded with collected scrap, and every character can make use of the standard weapons and useful consumables that are scattered throughout the environment. You can also run, clamber, and slide, ensuring that everyone has the same movement options available.
Each character is unique thanks to class weapons and abilities. For example, Valora is a close-range brawler that can craft a powerful assault shotgun and can drop a special shield that blocks damage but allows teammates to shoot out of it, while Tarik is a marksman that can craft a high-powered sniper rifle and can use a stun trap to disorient players and enemies that walk into its area of effect. These weapons and abilities can be game-changers, especially when used in combination with one another.
In terms of presentation, Scavengers features a semi-stylized art direction with lots of color and use of cel-shading. The animations are fluid and exaggerated, which makes the player almost feel as if they’re in an action movie. It’s worth noting that the game currently supports NVIDIA Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) technology, which preserves the visual fidelity of a game while also making it run much better. According to the developers, there will be support for ray tracing in the future as well.
Scavengers: Progression systems
Secondly, there’s also a shop that you can buy skins from, as well as characters that you haven’t unlocked yet. This can be done with the “chip” currency that you accrue over time by playing the game. According to Midwinter Entertainment CEO Josh Holmes in our Scavengers interview, the developers are making sure that all of the cosmetics in the game will be obtainable through playing the game normally, even if some of the items will also be obtainable via microtransactions.
Scavengers” Release date, pricing, and platforms
Source: Midwinter Entertainment
Your thoughts
Will you be playing Scavengers now that it’s out in Early Access? Let me know. The game just might end up being one of the best multiplayer PC games as well as one of the best Xbox multiplayer games, so you should definitely keep an eye on it. If it doesn’t sound like a good fit for you, however, make sure you check out our roundup of the best battle royale games for Windows PCs for other great options.
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