Huntscape

If you enjoy multiplayer competitive match-ups against others, then recent GreenHillGames release Huntscape might catch your eye. This is an intriguing little title that manages to package together a quite impressive collection of concepts into an intriguing little world. Four players take on the role of the Hunter, and four take on the role of the Prey. Your job? To hunt down the hunted, or to take down your prey.

The prey look to escape and sneak around to get out of the level, while the hunters look to bring them down. This adds a pretty basic element of survival games that has become atypical of the genre, but that does not mean that Huntscape is not without its charms.

Are you the hunter or the hunted?

What is interesting about this Early Access title is the way that it allows you to simply move around the world as various forms of prey. You are going to be spending much of your time either hunting down people using famous wildlife like bears and boars, or you are going to be strategically moving around as the people trying to outsmart the animals hunting you down.

The gameplay has a similarity to many titles in this genre, with some relations to the Predator: Hunting Grounds game that came out recently. You might also spot some visual similarities to cartoonish titles like Fornite. The gameplay is simple enough, and it makes it easy for you to get to grips with what you are actually doing.

However, this is still an early release title and thus it can look and feel pretty barebones at times. The core concept is there, but this definitely needs a fair amount of polish to get it up to the standard that we would have come to expect.

A solid idea that needs some work (6.5/10)

First and foremost, Huntscape has a fine starting place for ideas. At the moment, though, it feels like a rather odd combination of systems and ideas that might not make sense. For example, at the moment it is far more likely that you are going to be hunted down as a person as opposed to find much success. Most of your time is going to be spent basically hiding and hoping for the best, and the janky animations and limited visual quality does mean that much of the atmosphere is lost.

Pros

• Interesting enough gameplay system where you hunt as animals and hide as people
• Simple enough design that is easy to get to grips with for almost any PVP gamer

Cons

• Limited things to do and creatures means you can soon find the gameplay tedious
• Needs a lot more polish due to janky animations and generic, limited assets