Scavengers puts players in the role of young explorers fighting in a not-so-distant future, where cataclysmic events have triggered a new ice age. The game will combine exploration, survival and combat elements, while maintaining a focus on teamwork and cooperative game mechanics. 

Players will begin each game by equipping their Explorer, venturing into the wilds, competing and allying with other human players to complete objectives, gathering resources and battling against AI-controlled enemy factions. Large and unpredictable AI populations, combined with the balance of co-operation and competition between the human players, will create rich, repeatable gameplay.

Scavengers will allow players to experience vast play spaces, densely populated with satisfying AI combatants and supported by rich simulation of the surrounding world, providing endless emergent gameplay possibilities resulting from the interplay of human competitors and AI adversaries within a large, dynamic world.

Scavengers will build on the game design principles that made Halo 5’s Warzone a revolutionary new mode for Halo players, by allowing teams of players to compete with one another while exploring a large game map populated with hundreds of free-roaming and highly sophisticated AI enemies, with distinct factions, weapons and behaviors.

“We’re excited to have the opportunity to take this huge step for  Scavengers on a global stage like the Game Awards,” said Holmes. “Scavengers is a highly ambitious title that builds on the strengths and experience of the team at Midwinter to deliver a game that merges elements of PvE and PvP, while encouraging a spirit of cooperation and togetherness during play.”

Midwinter Entertainment also announced that the public playtests for Scavengers will start in 2019 for PC players. Players can sign up and join the community here.

The multiplayer “co-opetition” survival shooter will be built with Unreal Engine and powered by Improbable’s SpatialOS game development platform. With these technologies, Scavengers will provide endless emergent gameplay possibilities resulting from the interplay of human competitors and AI adversaries within a large, living world.

By dividing the action between multiple servers in the cloud, all of which contribute to building and running a seamless and consistent world, SpatialOS allows more sophisticated artificial intelligence, more AI entities and players occupying a seamless, shared environment, and a larger, more detailed and more deeply simulated game world than can be supported by the traditional client-server architecture used in online gaming.