Scavengers
PREVIEW
could deploy a bubble shield, and another
that could place a campfire that didn’t just
heal, but also warmed my team. Yeah,
there are survival systems in there, too.
Holmes knows the stigma that comes
with survival games. Babysitting meters,
farming materials, constructing items
from recipes—all that’s streamlined in
Scavengers. All you need to pay attention
to are your warmth and hunger, and both
food and fire are plentiful so long as you’re
willing to take on an enemy encampment
or, if you’re desperate, take out another
team for their supplies. Holmes sees
those meters as important pressure
points. “The survival mechanics are going
to press upon you in a way that forces you
to take advantage of the materials and
options that are available to you.”
The intent is to push players into
making tough decisions, to keep them
moving, to make sure there’s never a state
of absolute contentment. I’m told
Scavengers is meant to be paced like a
thriller, where players are always on edge,
a game where uncomfortable silences
punctuated by bursts of noise and
violence (and bears) are the norm.
The importance of staying fed and
warm tends to push players towards
violence or cooperation with one another,
but it’s not always enough. If DayZ is proof
of anything, it shows that interesting and
ambiguous social systems quickly devolve
into shooting one another on sight.
It’s why Scavengers is being developed
as a living game, to be updated regularly
with drastic meta changes, which means
daily, weekly, and seasonal incentives to
play both aggressively and peacefully will
lead to rewards of all types: Cosmetic, XP,
and whatever else makes the final cut.
Holmes and company make it clear that
Scavengers will change often and as much
as possible to best support the tenuous
social relationships and systemic chaos
that makes their project so compelling.
There will be big meta changes, too,
according to founder and UX and art
director Daryl Anselmo. “We’re talking
fairly large scale, creative event-driven
type stuff, “ he says. Holmes drives it
home: “We’re unafraid of change.” He
explains, “For a live service to be really
compelling, my opinion is you have to bewilling to make those big changes and
share them with the community.”
Anselmo says that while the release notes
will include the incremental, small-
percentile tweaks and changes to
otherwise invisible systems, they want
players to adapt to big changes.
Scavengers is all about responding to
change in a moment’s notice, so why not
expand that to the beloved meta?WEATHERING THE STORM
In my final match, an ally spots another
team busy with a Scourge harvesting
event, fighting off waves of fleshy enemies
in order to get some shards. I let my team
know, and we go on the offensive for no
reason other than greed. Three go down
without trouble, but the fourth gets away.
He stalks us throughout the match,
following our tracks in the deep snow,
taking potshots on occasion. My
teammates tell me it’s Daniel, the
animation guy. We never see where the
shots are coming from, but they keep
coming. I’m on edge, unnerved. Daniel, the
animation guy, stalks his prey from the
shadows, screwing with us.
Nowhere near our collective shard
goal, we run into a Scourge nest and kick
off our own harvesting event. It doesn’t
look like we’ll thin the horde before the
blizzard moves in and kills us all, but who
appears out of nowhere to help? That
stalker, Daniel. It takes me a minute to
realize what’s happening and I’m severely
tempted by instinct to pull the trigger. But
I don’t. We survive, all thanks to Daniel.
Aesop has a fable about this, I’m sure.
This wacky, systemic, social
experience comes from a game that’s so
early it’s barely hanging together. I can’t
imagine how it’ll play a year from now.
“We have the bones of a dynamic
weather system in place. We have the
bones of a dynamic time of day cycle in
place. We have the bones of deformable
snow terrain in place,” says Anselmo. “We
have the basic foundations of our
characters, we have enemies, we have a
whole set of modular pieces.”
It’s true: The bones are there, they
work and they’re capable. Midwinter is shy
about Scavenger’s current status, but it’s
in a better state and far more interesting
than most Early Access releases. Even so,
Midwinter is making sure those bones are
easy to iterate on and rearrange before
any sort of public playtests, due sometime
in 2019. But even this early, I can’t say I’ve
played anything quite like Scavengers.
James DavenportTHE INTENT IS TO PUSH
PLAYERS INTO MAKING
TOUGH DECISIONSSteer clear of storms, but
worry about bears first.