UPDATE: It looks as though there’s been a wobble and Crucible hasn’t gone live as planned – it’s moved to ‘Coming Soon’ on Steam. Stay tuned as we find out more!
It’s an exciting day, as there’s a new free-to-play game on its way in the shape of sci-fi shooter Crucible; the first game from Amazon Game Studios. Whatever you might think about Jeff Bezos, the multiplayer shooter is looking all kinds of awesome, with a variety of modes for players to sink into.
Crucible launches today, the 20th of May, at 12:00pm Pacific Time, which translates to 20:00 or 8pm here in the United Kingdom. You can find links to download it here on Steam.
Crucible is a free-to-play PVP team based action shooter that claims to be “driven by the choices you make”. Quite how that is going to translate into shooting aliens and each other remains to be seen, but based on the trailers it certainly looks like it’s had plenty of attention heaped on it. Players can choose from ten different hunter types, each of which boasts an array of unique abilities. Before a game starts, players then choose which upgrades that character will work through in the course of a match, giving a world of variation to how each character plays.
Starting out life as a 12 player battle royale-style last man/alien standing affair when it started development in 2016, the game’s development shifted in the wake of PUBG, Fortnite et al as the battle royale space swiftly became clogged with other offerings that boasted far higher player numbers than Crucible was targeting. Instead they’ve shifted towards third-person viewpoint MOBA stylings, bringing memories of Epic’s Paragon and Motiga’s Gigantic, both of which were fantastic games that never found an audience. Amazon will be hoping for better from Crucible.
Crucible is currently a PC exclusive, with no word on a potential console port. It would be a perfect candidate though to arrive on PS5 and Xbox Series X at launch, and we’ll be waiting with baited breath for more on that.
