During The Game Awards 2024, Wargaming announced a new game IP - a free-to-play online PvPvE shooter Steel Hunters that combines the mechanics of Hero shooters, Battle Royale, and Extraction shooters. Players will control huge mechs and will have to win not only through reflexes, but also through well-thought-out tactics and synergy of fighters.
Steel Hunters tells the story of humanity's struggle to survive after a global catastrophe. To protect a rare extraterrestrial resource called Starfall, the Hunters were created. In the struggle for dominance, the Corporations and Factions turned the Hunters into fearsome war machines used to conquer scarce resources on the ruins of a green but abandoned Earth.
Steel Hunters is Wargaming's first major new gaming IP since the already closed Pagan Online (2019). The core development of the game has been led by the British Wargaming studio in Guildford for more than three years, with other studios, including Kyiv, helping. Thus, the Wargaming Kyiv team of artists creates concepts for Steel Hunters and develops the appearance of the Hunters. The game uses the Unreal Engine 5 engine.
Steel Hunters combines the mechanics of Hero shooters, battle royale and extraction shooters. Players join battles in the PvPvE arena with their own unique Hunter, pursuing various goals to level up their mech and acquire new equipment. And in the end, the teams meet in the final battle at the evacuation point. Each Hunter has its own style of play, unique sets of abilities, and progression systems that allow for a variety of strategies and tactics.
An interesting feature of the game is symbiosis, a combination of tactics and abilities with teammates' mechs. The gameplay of Steel Hunters, which we saw during an exclusive demonstration two weeks before The Game Awards 2024, differs from the one we are used to from other Extraction shooters, it is slower and more tactical, with the ability to flank, ambush, etc. It's a kind of World of Tanks, but with mechs and elements of Battle Royale and Extraction.
Wargaming invites players to join the 10-day Steel Hunters closed playtest, which is available on PC via: Wargaming Game Center and Steam.