Gear up with an arsenal of diverse firearms before heading into intense team-based action throughout the Middle East. A groundbreaking narrative for the shooter genre, the story of Insurgency: Sandstorm focuses on a female protagonist who is a Yazidi Kurd. Thematically, the game is inspired by real events and people, however this is a fictional story and characters.

Insurgency: Sandstorm brings extended gameplay possibilities, improved immersion, and new 4-playe co-op and versus objective-based game modes. All while retaining the lethal tactical action that made Insurgency the worldwide phenomenon it is today.

Fight across a modern battlefield utilizing gameplay mechanics that blur the lines between reality and shooter - split second decisions will mean life or death for you and your team. Each weapon has unique ballistic calculations that take into account things like bullet drop and penetration power. Choose to drop magazines for faster reloads in dangerous situations, carefully open doors to keep quiet, or bash doors down with a shoulder charge, and much more.

Participate in large-scale battles in up to 16-versus-16 skirmishes with artillery barrages, helicopter gunships, repurposed commercial drones, air strikes, and drivable land transport vehicles. Battle across expansive maps with interiors to breach and high-value objectives to control with your team. Each map’s size and play areas are adjusted specifically for each game mode and can also be played in co-op against bots.

Like its predecessor, Insurgency: Sandstorm rewards teamwork and objective play over personal success. Players will also finally see long awaited features such as character customization, ranked matchmaking, and many more.

Insurgency: Sandstorm will officially launch for Windows PC in September 2018 on Steam for $29.99. Pre-ordering will get you a 10% discount, and for those who already own Insurgency there will be an additional loyalty discount of 10%, adding up to a total of 20% off. We aren’t sharing a specific release date just yet, but will announce it in due time.

We’ll be accepting pre-orders for Insurgency: Sandstorm on Steam very soon. In addition to the discounts being offered, pre-ordering will get you access to a beta version before release. This beta will be the full game, but will likely still have some bugs and issues to be resolved. We look forward to getting our community’s help in reporting and addressing these remaining issues, as well as receiving any general feedback, as we approach release. This community feedback has always been a big part of the development process in any of our games, so we’re excited at the opportunity to have a beta like this. Details on when the beta will start will be available at a later date.

Sandstorm’s release for the PS4 and Xbox One has unfortunately needed to be pushed back. We’re currently planning for a console launch sometime in the first half of 2019. Our original goal was to release both console and Windows PC versions side by side in 2018, but we feel we need more time to polish the console experience. It’s important that we ensure we deliver an overall solid experience that is as bug free and stable as possible regardless of platform. Rest assured we still have every intention to expand our community to console, it’s just going to need to take a little more time. We know this may be disappointing news to some of you. We’ve been shown a lot of love (especially recently) from console players who are hankering for a kind of hardcore gameplay like the one we provide. We want our new console audience to have a great first impression, and feel strongly that the extra time will better allow us to accomplish this.

Let’s talk a little bit about our content and what’s new. We’ll be releasing in September with the following game modes: Push, Firefight, and Capture the Base for Versus, as well as Checkpoint for Coop. Operation and Outpost were mentioned in our last blog post; Outpost being a legacy mode of Insurgency and Operation being something more experimental. These won’t be included for release and will be considered for post-release content instead. We’ve found they’ll need some more attention than we originally planned, and we still need to determine if they have a place in our experience. As we mentioned in the last community update, we want to make sure every game mode is tight, unique, and fun, and that we don’t split our playerbase too much with too many. Checkpoint mode is shaping up really nicely, and has some pretty sweet improvements since Insurgency. We can’t give specifics just yet, but you’ll be seeing them soon enough.

Similar to Insurgency, we plan to support Insurgency: Sandstorm with free content updates post-release. We will continually expand the game with new weapons, upgrades, maps, and other content. Modding support is something we are committed to providing. We want to work with our modding community to give them the tools they need to create exciting new content beyond what the official experience offers. This includes Steam Workshop integration, custom map tools, game rule adjustments (similar to Insurgency’s theater system), and things of that nature.

We’ve added a ton of content since our last update in January. Release will have roughly 40 weapons and about 40 upgrades available for many of those weapons. While some of these weapons will be familiar for fans of Insurgency, many are new. Fire support has been further fleshed out and runs the gamut from jet airstrikes (BRRRT), explosive artillery, chemical mortars, explosive suicide drones, and helicopters who will swoop in and attack with rockets, miniguns, and autocannons. When coordinated effectively by a team’s Commander and Observer player classes, one of these fire support options can spark a pretty wicked comeback or solidify the strength of a push. We’re also working on our character customization system which will include hundreds of different cosmetic items as well as several voice options. We will have over 6500 lines of unique character dialogue including local Arab fighters (for both Security and Insurgent teams), American special operations soldiers, fire support coordinators, and air support pilots. We currently have no plans to include Steam Marketplace support, item trading, or a loot crate system. All these items, in addition to not affecting gameplay, will be a totally optional secondary aspect to the game. They will be unlocked by progressing through ranks and by using an ingame currency system with a direct buy option for most items.

Oh yeah, and we’re working on dismemberment too. This is still a pretty heavy work in progress.

Key Features:

• Insurgency: Sandstorm brings extended gameplay possibilities, improved immersion, and new co-op and versus objective-based game modes. All while retaining the lethal tactical action that made Insurgency the worldwide phenomenon it is today.
• Fight across a modern battlefield utilizing gameplay mechanics that blur the lines between reality and shooter - split second decisions will mean life or death for you and your team. Each weapon has unique ballistic calculations that take into account things like bullet drop and penetration power. Choose to drop magazines for faster reloads in dangerous situations, carefully open doors to keep quiet, or bash doors down with a shoulder charge, and much more.
• Participate in large-scale battles in up to 16-versus-16 skirmishes with artillery barrages, helicopter gunships, repurposed commercial drones, air strikes, and drivable land transport vehicles. Battle across expansive maps with interiors to breach and high-value objectives to control with your team. Each map’s size and play areas are adjusted specifically for each game mode and can also be played in co-op against bots.
• Like its predecessor, Insurgency: Sandstorm rewards teamwork and objective play over personal success. Players will also finally see long awaited features such as character customization, ranked matchmaking, and many more.
• Light vehicles for transportation and fire support, with new game modes designed for vehicle gameplay.
• Competitive matchmaking, anti-cheat, and rankings system.

Insurgency: Sandstorm is coming to PC in Sept. 2018, PS4 and Xbox in 2019.