Hyenas is the current project from the creators of Alien: Isolation – but very different from the horror trip

Admittedly, the fact that this game isn’t a sequel to Alien: Isolation hurts a bit. I don’t want to sob sentimentally, but the excellent film adaptation is among the best I’ve ever played, so I wish little more than, well, more of it. So be it. After all, I can get a similar amount out of good multiplayer action and so I’m not angry at all that Hyenas is a very interesting title in development.

One that’s also vaguely reminiscent of Hunt: Showdown, as five teams of three compete for hefty loot while also dealing with game-controlled opponents. In detail, however, this differs significantly from Crytek’s PvPvE shooter.

Staying true to sci-fi, Hyenas is set in a future where the wealthy use large spaceships to transport museum pieces precious because they are objects of our contemporary pop culture, such as Sonic statues, Rubik’s Cubes and more . And so that capitalists bathing in gold are not the only ones to enjoy them, pirates are on the verge of making these objects available to other interested parties.

Also, unlike in Hunt, there is no consolation prize here, as only the winning team will walk away with their loot at the end. Although there are several safes in which various exhibits are stored, there is only one exit – the position of which is displayed as soon as the pirates have bagged a certain amount of stolen goods.

So could you just wait for the opposing teams to wear themselves out and finish off the rest at the Extraction Point? I ask Christoph Will from Creative Assembly after the short gamescom presentation and the Lead Meta Designer explains that this is of course possible in principle, even if it is difficult to do. After all, you can find grenades, health boosters and other items on every safe that give your team great advantages. It should therefore hardly be worth completely ignoring the central hunting or gathering.

The safes are randomly placed in a number of possible locations and the maps should be large enough so that you don’t immediately run into an enemy squad’s muzzle flash. Or fly! Because Hyenas plays in spaceships, there are also rooms without gravity, so you can move in all three dimensions. Don’t worry: the hovering should be very catchy, since the view never rotates around its own axis, for example. Tactical finesse is provided by magnetic boots that pull you back down to earth, as well as switches that turn gravity on and off.

In any case, Will and his team value variety when it comes to the weapons or skills of their characters, because the pirate gangs consist of character heads with individual characteristics, as is common today – each character should have a special weapon and an ability. There are also various consumables. At gamescom, Creative Assembly is focusing on weapons and grenades, which can be used to create walls of foam and temporarily stick enemies in place. A temporary wall hack, on the other hand, allows you to see through walls.

And as I said: You don’t just mess with the other squads, you also have to deal with the robots that stand guard on the spaceships. Above all, they should make opening a safe a challenge, but of course they can also interfere if you actually want to concentrate on an enemy team. The name of the door opener, which is used to slowly open the locked door of a safe, is funny, by the way, because the device was christened the Mega Drive. In fact, Hyena’s is said to be full of such and other nods to the entertainment industry of our day and bygone.

What Creative Assembly hasn’t said yet is the progression system – if there will be one. For now, Will is just emphasizing that each game should basically stand on its own. There may still be global progress, but whether you can only change the appearance of the characters or even influence the choice of weapons and skills will be announced later.

I was happy that Hyena’s should run for a long time. Will avoids the term “service game”, but should the shooter take off, fans can at least expect that it will be provided with further content and gameplay adjustments for the foreseeable future. Plus the smart art design, the context-sensitive ping… Of course, I still don’t have a detailed impression for a concrete assessment, but on paper I’m at least very excited about what’s in store for us here.

And who knows: in the end it’s so successful that Sega is thinking about a sequel to Alien: Isolation. Sorry for the nerves. But I won’t give up hope!