World of Tanks creators Wargaming are getting into the mech-bothering business with Steel Hunters – a new free-to-play Unreal Engine multiplayer shooter, in which Transformers-style juggernauts fight for control of an energy source called “Starfall” on smashable, post-apocalyptic maps. It’s just been announced at Wrasslin’ Geoff’s Winter Hootenanny, aka the Game Awards, and there’s a 10 day PC playtest underway right now. Here’s a trailer.
I attended a presentation for Steel Hunters before the show, and am thus in a position to serve up some breathtakingly average insights. To get the obvious question out of the way: why not call it World Of Mechs? Wargaming didn’t address this on the call, but I imagine part of the answer is that there’s already a game called World Of Mechs, albeit for VR. But Wargaming also seem keen to put some distance between the games, and in practice, Steel Hunters isn’t just World Of Tanks with some Michael Bay DLC.
The core Starfall Harvest mode is a mix of hero shooter, battle royale and extraction shooter, with six squads of two fighting to claim towers on rolling town-and-country maps full of destructible fixtures, levelling up as they do battle. In addition to enemy hunters, each map harbours fleets of flying drones who can be farmed for upgrade materials and consumables.
There are two broad types of upgrade material. Energy is your generic XP, allowing you to level up: there are five levels, with a new ability unlocked at level three. Upgrade cores, meanwhile, raise your shield, damage and health pools. There’s the familiar, MOBA-ish question of whether to target other players early or hog the map perimeter and focus on farming and upgrades.
Beyond the race to upgrade, you’ve got a number of routes to victory. Claiming towers activates power-ups such as radar coverage or stat buffs, together with looting opportunities, so it’s worth bagging one or two of these while chasing the drones. But you might decide to focus instead on killing other hunters and collecting their tags to unlock the most powerful consumable of all – the Colossus kit. This transforms you into a steel-shouldered Olympian, raining hellfire upon the other mechs.
In either case, you’ll have to worry about an endgame in which squads must capture and hold a single extraction point, or eliminate all the other teams. It sounds like the Colossus will be extra-useful at this point, so even if you’re not aiming to Colossify yourself, you’ll want to sabotage any teams who are ahead on player kills.
As for the characters, they span a range of classes or playstyles familiar from other shooters. Razorside is a boringly bipedal “GI Joe” all-rounder, designed to attract players fresh from games in which you play some kind of non-metallic, flesh-based robot, a “human being”, if you will. Ursus is a bearbot with guided missile launchers, while Fenris is a nimble wolfbot who can blink-teleport as in Dishonored. He’s presumably bad news for Prophet, a gesticulating drone summoner and artillery platform who can’t take many hits.
Trenchwalker is a combat medic with a leechgun that heals allies, while Weaver is – surprise, surprise – a clanky arachnid who works a bit like Overwatch’s Bastion, firing off machinegun fusillades that force him to move slowly. Last but not least, there’s Heartbreaker – the token girl, as regards the December playtest at least. She’s a sniper femme fatale, because of course she is. More Hunters will be added every season: I’m betting they’ll add a ninja, a robo-dragon, and a lady with SMGs on rollerskates.
While you’ll level up afresh in each round, you can also customise your hunter’s base loadout to suit your methods. You might, for instance, modify Fenris’s blink to heal you or reload your gun. As for the monetisation, it’s a season pass format, similar to World of Tanks. Everything in each season will be free – paintjobs, emotes, new hunters, skins – providing you’re willing to grind for it. Alternatively, you can pony up to skip the levelling.
I can’t say I’m blown away by what I’ve seen of Steel Hunters. It’s a cobbling together of genres and sci-fi archetypes that already feels like it’s going to ride principally on the association with World Of Tanks. It seems sturdily-made, however, and I’m kind of charmed by Wargaming’s ridiculous insistence on having their very own word for co-op teamwork – “Duo Symbiosis”.
The presenter spent about four minutes explaining this term, and I’m still not entirely sure whether it’s an actual in-game system or just publicity jargon for “pick a loadout that complements your partner’s”. If you decide to join the December playtest, let me know if there’s anything more to it, please? Speaking of which: the playtest contains three maps – two set in the USA, one in the UK – seven hunters, and the core Starfall Harvest mode.
You can read more about Steel Hunters on Steam or via the official site. They’re launching it in beta next year.
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