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Amazon has finally set a release date for Crucible, a new hero-based third-person shooter that seems to mix up online fighting arena games like Smite and arena shooters like Overwatch, as well as some mixed player versus environment mechanisms.
The release comes years after Amazon first announced it was working on Crucible at Twitchcon 2016. The game, which was featured in a new trailer today, will be released on May 20 and will be available for free on Steam.
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What separates Crucible from some other similar titles are its three main game modes – Heart of the Hives, Alpha Hunters and Harvester Command – and focus on improving skills and abilities as the match progresses.
So far, game modes include Heart of the Hives which has two fighting teams of players as well as AI-controlled alien wildlife in a race to claim three alien hearts first, while Alpha Hunters pits eight teams of two against the last team standing. Harvester Command borrows mechanisms from popular MOBAs and instructs two teams of players to compete for a shared resource, with the first team exhausting the other resource being the winner.
Curious? Here's the trailer that Amazon released today with the announcement:
MOBA? Arena shooter? Royal battle? What is this game?
Crucible has a little bit of everything, borrowing from all kinds of zeitgeisty right now and mixing them in a unique way.
Some will probably describe the game as Overwatch or Smite because the game has up to 10 playable heroes from which to choose (think of classes but with different abilities) but adds in the upgrade tree that you will find in a traditional MOBA like League of Legends.
Place it in the outer reaches and you have the Creuset recipe.
While Amazon has been relatively silent about its game studio, Crucible is just one of the three big online projects that Amazon Game Studios is currently preparing – there are New World, an MMORPG on the fight against a newly discovered continent, and an MMORPG based on the Lord of the Rings also coming from the studio.
That said, don't expect all three games to be available immediately – Crucible will go live on May 20, followed by New World in August and The Lord of the Rings MMO at some point, potentially around the same time as ‘Amazon launches its new Lord of the Rings TV series.
How will it make money?
Like some other popular and third-person MOBA shooters, Crucible will be free, allowing players to get started while probably putting additional skins, characters, or cosmetic items on sale for an additional purchase.
Unfortunately, we haven't seen what the in-game store looks like yet, so there could be a lot of locked content – but we'll reserve our judgment until we can verify the game for ourselves later this month. -this.
That said, I hope there will be a crossover with the company's Amazon Prime subscription service in terms of free or discounted items and, who knows, even discounts at play around Amazon Prime Day . Nothing is certain yet, but its Twitch Prime program shows that Amazon is not one to avoid a small cross promotion when it has the opportunity.
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