Scavengers - What We Know So Far
Battle royales are arguably in the midst of a second wave. Their first wave, so to speak, kicked off with PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, which codified the genre, before being famously tweaked first by Fortnite and then by titles like Apex Legends and Call of Duty: Warzone, which found footing despite the genre rapidly becoming oversaturated.
Now it takes more than just tight gunplay and a shrinking circle for a battle royale to succeed. Fall Guys best exemplifies the present-day approach to the genre, in which the last-player-standing philosophy is applied to an otherwise novel framework. Upcoming multiplayer shooter Scavengers looks to do this as well, implementing ideas not just from earlier battle royales but from MOBAs and survival games, too.
While its story is somewhat convoluted, it lays the framework for its distinct style of gameplay. In Scavengers, an asteroid has shattered the Moon, rendering the Earth frozen. There's also a widespread virus that transforms humans into zombie-like creatures. Players control soldiers sent to recover data on the cold, plague-ridden remains of the Earth. Competing teams of soldiers are the in-fiction basis for its competitive multiplayer gameplay.
When is Scavengers supposed to come out?
The most recent look at Scavengers came during The Game Awards 2020, during which a short trailer announcing the game's Closed Beta period aired. Overall, 50,000 players were let in, from both among earlier testers and new applicants. Scavengers entered Closed Beta at the time of the trailer's debut, on Dec. 10, and will remain so until Dec. 21. A date for its full release its currently undetermined, though it's expected to come out sometime in 2021.
That said, complications could very well arise due to the currently ongoing pandemic and/or the numerous other sorts of issues that oftentimes hinder game development, so this time frame remains a general estimate and not a prescriptive schedule.
Scavengers has a history of being shown at the Game Awards — it was first revealed in a trailer that aired during the show in 2018. At that time, it was announced that players who wanted to sign up for playtesting would be granted access in 2019. Given that the game is still ultimately in its testing period, it's likely that developer Midwinter Entertainment will take its time rather than rush the game's release.
Is there a trailer for Scavengers?
While this year's Game Awards marked the most recent time that Scavengers has been showcased, the trailer shown then was merely a short announcement of the beginning of its Closed Beta period, including virtually no other useful information about the title. In September of this year, however, a both cinematic and gameplay trailer was released, in which its plot and gameplay were lightly detailed.
The trailer is narrated by a character described on the game's official website as Mother, an A.I. programmed to protect and lead the human beings remaining following the apocalypse-like events that frame Scavengers' story. She explains that player characters will travel in squads to the surface of the Earth in search of valuable data. Mother details how these teams will not just be fighting against one another but also the frozen Earth's climate and the creatures that inhabit the ruined planet.
This ultimately sets the stage for the unique blend of gameplay elements with which players will contend.
What exactly do you do in Scavengers?
Midwinter Entertainment describes Scavengers as "hybrid of sandbox-style PVE and class-based PVP," more commonly known as PvPvE. Up to 20 squads will battle both among one another as well as against A.I. enemies in each match. The end goal of is to capture more datapoints than competing squads and escape in a dropship that touches down to extract surviving players at the match's end. Outside the map is a constricting circle, just like in virtually all other battle royale-style shooters, representing a deadly storm. Other, smaller storms will also periodically pop up within the safe area confined by the circle.
Entering into a new match, players will select a class and loadout. While all players will start with nothing and ultimately scavenge resources to build items from their loadout, the recipes for those items are unlocked over time in order to provide a sense of progression. Defeating enemies rewards experience, like in League of Legends' influential PvPvE gameplay, necessitating battle with A.I. hordes.
Death is not permanent unless all players in a squad are quickly wiped, though each death does mean losing all datapoints not yet offloaded through a datalink.
On which platforms is Scavengers available?
Scavengers' Closed Beta period is exclusive to Steam, through which it's only playable on PCs running Windows 10. However, Midwinter Entertainment has promised that the game will eventually be released for consoles but has only specified a vague future date for the time at which it will be available on other systems.
This could ultimately mean one of two things: a simultaneous PC and console release of the finished product or that plans for console versions of Scavengers have yet to be set in stone. In the first case, Midwinter could be simply using the unspecified future date of the game's general release as the timing for its console availability. In the latter case, Midwinter may be waiting until console development is further along before promising whether or not a release will line up with that of the PC version.
Midwinter's copy outlining its console plans is specifically in response to a question about PS4 and Xbox versions. Though the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S era is underway, this suggests the game's console release will accommodate previous-generation consoles as well.