Scavengers is a hard game to describe. The free-to-play online shooter from Washington-based developer Midwinter is a battle royale game where the goal isn’t necessarily to be the last team alive. It’s a squad-based shooter where you can win a match without ever even seeing an enemy team. And it’s a survival game where you only have to stay alive until the match timer runs out. It’s a compelling hybrid of popular PvP and PvE mechanics blended together to create a refreshingly unique experience that’s well worth a look as the game enters Early Access this week. I recently got to participate in a hands-on preview session that allowed me to spend a few hours playing matches and tinkering with the game’s robust progression system.
Scavengers is a sandbox online shooter that groups players into teams of 3 and drops them onto a hostile planet in a race to salvage as much data as possible before heading to an extraction point for evac. In addition to enemy players, you and your teammates will have to contend with survival elements like hunger and extreme weather, as well as AI-controlled creatures and raider gangs. There’s also a crafting system that ranks up in-match as you gather data, allowing you to construct gear improvements such as a better shield and your character’s signature weapon. On top of all that, the world is procedurally generated, eliminating the meta-game aspect of racing to a specific landmark that tends to plague other battle royale games. And even though Scavengers is undeniably structured like a battle royale shooter, that’s not an entirely accurate label. Although it will feel extremely familiar to anyone who has played Fortnite or Warzone, a match of Scavengers plays out like a hybrid of Apex Legends, Valheim, and Predator: Hunting Grounds. (Let’s hope it sticks around in the zeitgeist longer than that last title.)
I got to play three matches during my time with the game, which teamed me and another media person with one of Midwinter’s developers acting as a de facto squad leader and guide. Scavengers is a character-based shooter, with each character possessing a unique special ability and craftable weapon. The three characters available to you from the outset cover the three main archetypes of attack, defense, and support – Halden carries a special assault rifle and is the tankiest character, Valora is squishy but wields a devastating shotgun, and Tarik is the sniper. Their special abilities, such as a shield bubble and a healing aura, reflect their fireteam roles and are available the instant your boots touch the ground at the start of a match (albeit with the requisite cooldown timer). However, like most other battle royale games, everything else in your inventory depends entirely on what you’re able to find in the environment. Consequently, the first few minutes play out just like Fortnite or Warzone, with you and your teammates in a mad dash to loot the surrounding buildings for weapons and gear.
Looting the environment is the primary objective of Scavengers. You and your team comb the planet in search of data points to harvest, eating rations to keep your hunger bar from depleting and finding fire and shelter when you get too cold. You’ll also find plenty of scrap, which you can use to craft gear improvements. There’s a bit of a MOBA element to the crafting system, as it ranks up in-match to grant you access to better crafting recipes. You’ll eventually unlock the ability to build your character’s signature weapon, and trust me, you will want to do that as soon as possible. As you scrounge around for scrap and data, a violent storm continues to shrink the map, eventually forcing every team into an endgame chokepoint at a massive dropship. Scavengers operates on a similar wavelength to Apex Legends and Warzone in that if you or one of your squadmates is killed, you can respawn after a brief cooldown period as long as somebody else on the team is still alive. However, when your character is killed, you drop all your gear as well as any data you collected. (You can bank your data if you’re lucky enough to find a storage point in your travels, but otherwise it stays precariously in your pocket ready to fly out at a bullet’s notice.) The surviving team who made it to the dropship with the most data when the match timer runs out wins, but every team who successfully extracted also receives rewards based on how much data they collected, so there’s incentive to stick it out to the end even if you’re desperately behind.
The time spent in-between matches also provides a surprising amount of gameplay, as this is where your data comes into play. A research system allows you to spend your data to unlock various account-wide perks, such as starting weapons and equipment and improvements to your characters’ abilities. It’s an interesting way to keep players invested in every match, gathering as much data as possible and fighting tooth and nail on the dropship to advance their research. It definitely kept me engaged even when my team was losing terribly, although it makes every death particularly brutal as you watch your hard-earned data hit the ground and get scooped up by an enemy team. There’s also the standard marketplace you can visit between matches to buy cosmetic upgrades for your character, such as new skins and emotes.
The Midwinter team kept using the phrase “PvEvP” to describe Scavengers, and that’s not an inaccurate description. Most of my time in the game was spent completely ignoring the rest of the players as my teammates and I combed the alien world for goodies. The gameplay loop of playing a match to earn data to use to research buffs for my characters and account in between rounds is a satisfying one, and mowing down hordes of AI raiders and alien beasts provides some welcome low-pressure fun in a notoriously high-pressure genre. Plus there’s a slide mechanic that allows you to coast merrily down snowy hills like a kid in a Norman Rockwell painting, and that will literally never get old. The fun of poking around on your own like a team of explorers makes it all the more tense when a firefight does erupt between you and a squad of enemy players. The skirmishes I experienced were brief and chaotic, with the threat of losing valuable research data forcing everyone to fight just a little bit harder to stay alive. The gunplay doesn’t have the polish of Apex Legends or Fortnite, but it is good nail-biting fun, and it calls on you to really be familiar with your character’s signature weapon and ability to eke out a victory.
Scavengers is a promising title. It’s a mish-mash of current white-hot genres that works surprisingly well, and it will feel extremely familiar to anyone who has played a battle royale game, making it relatively easy to pick up and play. The game’s core loop, which focuses more on your PvE success than your PvP skills, appeals to a casual gamer like myself, allowing you to earn tangible rewards and progress even if you never win a single match. Plus, a breathtaking escape with a fistful of data is every bit as thrilling as claiming an actual match victory, so coming in second or third or even dead last doesn’t always feel like a loss. It’ll be interesting to see how Scavengers develops during Early Access, and whether players embrace the compelling hybrid experience it offers.
Scavengers enters Early Access April 28th in a limited time Twitch Drops event beginning at 12 am PST / 3 am EST / 8 am BST, with plans to open up to all players thereafter. For more information on how to join Early Access via the event, check out the official Scavengers homepage.
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