Savage, nightmarish monsters roam the Louisiana swamps, and you are part of a group of rugged bounty hunters bound to rid the world of their ghastly presence. Banish these creatures from our world, and you will be paid generously—and given the chance to buy more gruesome and powerful weapons. Fail, and death will strip you of both character and gear. Your experience, however, remains in your pool of hunters—called your Bloodline—always.

Hunt’s competitive, match-based gameplay mixes PvP and PvE elements to create a uniquely tense experience where your life, your character, and your gear are always on the line. At the beginning of each match, up to five teams of two set out to track their monstrous targets. Once they’ve found and defeated one of these they will receive a bounty—and instantly become a target for every other Hunter left on the map. If you don’t watch your back, you’ll find a knife in it, and your last memory will be of another team of Hunters walking away with your prize. The higher the risk, the higher the reward–but a single mistake could cost you everything.

The Hunt: Showdown team is delighted to let loose their new AI creature: the Immolator.

Meanwhile, today's Update 5.0 brings all times of day to both maps and enables Quickplay on Lawson Delta. Also new to the game is the Bornheim No. 3, the latest addition to the game's compact pistol family.

Players can learn more about how the team made the Immolator AI in a recent blog post featuring three members of the dev team. In short, it is a new AI class, designed to create chaos around any movement that it senses nearby. The Bornheim No. 3 is a semi-automatic pistol that uses compact ammo, has a high rate of fire, and benefits from the use of the Bulletgrubber trait. As for expanded lighting options, players can now hunt in Daylight, Nighttime, Golden, and Foggy on both the Lawson Delta Map and Stillwater Bayou.

Every update has its big highlights, but 5.0 also contains quite a few smaller changes aimed at improving the overall experience for as many players as possible. To that end, Update 5.0 includes boss and AI movement and balancing changes, a long list of audio updates and fixes, Quickplay adjustments, performance upgrades, and many other items that players can read about in detail in the patch notes.

Even in death, you will be able to progress among the ranks of Hunters via your Bloodline. Though one character may die, their experience will be transferred to your Bloodline, where it can be applied your other Hunters. If you make it off of the map alive, you will be able to use the money and experience you earn to kit out new Hunters and prepare for the next match. If you die, you lose everything but your experience.

Dark Sight allows Hunters to see into the veil between worlds, making that which cannot be seen by mortal eyes visible to those who have been initiated. Use Dark Sight when you are tracking monsters, and a ghostly light will guide you toward your next target. Dark Sight also marks players carrying a bounty, making them more vulnerable to ambush while trying to escape.

Hunt: Showdown is now currently available via Early Access, priced at 29.99 EUR/USD and 25.99 GBP.