World Of Tanks creators reveal Steel Hunters, which isn’t quite World Of Mechs

World of Tanks Wargaming’s creators are entering the hectic mech business with Steel Hunters, a new free-to-play multiplayer shooter powered by the Unreal Engine that pits Transformers-style juggernauts for control of a power source called Starfall across crumbling post-apocalyptic maps. . It was just announced at Wrasslin’ Geoff’s Winter Hootenanny, also known as the Game Awards, and is currently undergoing a 10-day playtest on PC. Here’s the trailer.

Before the show, I attended the Steel Hunters presentation and thus can share some amazingly average ideas. To get the obvious question out of the way: why not call it World Of Mechs? Wargaming didn’t bring this up during the call, but I guess part of the answer is that there is There’s already a game called World Of Mechsalbeit for VR. But Wargaming also seems 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 main mode of Starfall Harvest is a mix of hero shooter, battle royale and extraction shooter, in which six squads of two battle for towers on moving maps of towns and villages full of destructible contraptions, leveling up as they fight. In addition to enemy hunters, each map has a fleet of flying drones that can be farmed to obtain upgrade materials and consumables.

There are two main types of upgrade materials. Energy is your overall experience that allows you to level up: there are five levels, and the third level unlocks a new ability. In the meantime, improve the cores, increase your shield, damage and health. There’s a familiar MOBA-style question about whether to target other players early or capture the perimeter of the map and focus on farming and upgrades.

Besides racing for improvements, you have several paths to victory. Capturing towers will activate power-ups such as radar coverage or stat boosts, as well as looting opportunities, so it’s worth collecting one or two of these while chasing down drones. But instead, you can focus on killing other hunters and collecting their marks to unlock the most powerful consumable of all – the Colossus set. This will turn you into a steel-shouldered Olympian raining hellfire on other robots.

Either way, you’ll have to worry about the ending, in which squads must capture and hold one extraction point or eliminate all other teams. Looks like Colossus will be additional-useful at this point, so even if you’re not going to colossify yourself, you’ll want to sabotage any teams that are ahead in kills.

As for the characters, they cover a range of classes and playstyles familiar from other shooters. Razorside is a boring, bipedal GI Joe all-rounder designed to attract players fresh from games in which you play as some kind of non-metallic flesh robot, a “human” if you will. Ursus is a robotic bear with guided missile launchers, and Fenris is a nimble robotic wolf who can blink and teleport, as in Disgraced. He’s probably bad news for the Prophet, a gesticulating drone summoner and artillery platform that can’t take many hits.

Trenchwalker is a combat medic with a leech gun that heals allies, and Weaver is surprise, surprise, a clanking arachnid that works a bit like Overwatch‘s Bastionfiring machine gun volleys that make him move slowly. Last but not least, Heartbreaker is an iconic girl, at least as far as the December playtest is concerned. She’s a femme fatale sniper, because of course she is. More Hunters will be added each season: I bet they’ll add a ninja, a robot dragon, and a lady with submachine guns on roller skates.

While you’ll level up again each round, you can also customize your hunter’s base equipment to suit your methods. For example, you can change Fenris’s blink to heal you or reload your gun. As for monetization, it is a season pass format similar to World of Tanks. Everything in each season will be free – coloring pages, emotes, new hunters, skins – provided that you are willing to strive for it. Alternatively, you can spend money to skip leveling.

I can’t say I’m amazed by what I’ve seen of Steel Hunters. It’s a combination of genres and sci-fi archetypes that already seems to be based primarily on the association with World Of Tanks. It feels solidly built, though, and I’m kind of fascinated by Wargaming’s ridiculous insistence on having its own word for collaborative teamwork – “Duo Symbiosis.”

The host spent about four minutes explaining the term, and I’m still not entirely sure if it’s an actual in-game system or just advertising jargon for “choose gear that complements your partner’s.” If you decide to join the December playtest, let me know if there’s anything else in it please? By the way: the test contains three maps – two in the US, one in the UK, seven hunters and the main Starfall Harvest mode.

You can read more about Steel Hunters at Steam or through official website. They will launch a beta version next year.

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