I am really bad at Hunt: Showdown.
Crouched on the top floor of the rusted-out stairwell in the ruins of the old prison – a place that always feels like a trap – I feel like have all the approaches covered.
I’d placed a concertina trap at the bottom of the stairs, a nasty trip line that sprays barbed wire everywhere when triggered. I’d quietly closed the creaky shutter on a nearby window, ensuring it couldn’t be opened without me hearing it.
Duck to the building on the left,
or head into the woods on the right?
Now I have eyes on the prize – a trophy sitting on the ground of the open chamber beyond the crumbling doorway. I had even been the one to down the hunter that had killed Scrapbeak, the giant bird-like boss, and picked it up in the first place.
I didn’t outfight him or outthink my opponent. I got lucky with a well-timed shotgun blast as he rounded the corner.
I stop and listen. You have to stop and listen all the time in Hunt: Showdown, preferably through really good headphones. Creaks, footsteps, jangling glass, and even the sounds of other hunters switching weapons – every audio cue is crucial. Being patient is how you win.
It’s all quiet. I run for it. If I can grab the trophy, I’ll get a few seconds of dark vision and be able to spot other lurking hunters behind walls.
Almost there…
I’m five steps into the room when the shot comes from a shadowy walkway in front of me. One headshot and I’m down. Game over. I spectate for a bit and watch my killer scoop up the trophy and take a victory lap, an easy jog to the extraction point.
My killer was more patient than I was.
So… yeah. I’m really bad at Hunt: Showdown. But I keep playing it anyway.
Drain the Swamp
Hunt: Showdown first launched in early access in 2018. Originally conceived as a purely cooperative game, it changed direction over the course of development, finally launching as a “player vs. player vs. environment” extraction shooter.
The game has had its ups and downs. Initial reviews were generally positive, but it didn’t catch fire out of the gate. The engine was often criticized and the mechanics weren’t well-balanced at launch. The guns, unlike the guns in Battlefield or PUBG, were mostly chunky single-shot rifles and six-shooters that would not have seemed out of place in Red Dead Redemption.
Hunt: Showdown did not seem like it had the traditional recipe for multiplayer shooter success.
Still, the uniqueness made the game stand out from the pack. The setting is horror-tinged – weird West meets zombies. Players take on the role of monster hunters heading into a dangerous, swampy landscape – Louisiana in 1895 – to track down, kill, and then banish fearsome creatures and bring back a trophy.
makes too much noise, and you can’t see.
Play spot-the-zombie here.
Other players – up to twelve on a map, in groups of one to three – are all trying to do the same thing. As clues gradually lead everyone to the location of the match’s bosses, a final, chaotic firefight in one of the map’s signature compounds is inevitable.
While other human players are typically the thing that finishes you off in Hunt, the environments and AI enemies are also dangerous – varied and deadly hordes of undead, monstrous dogs, and giant mutants lurking behind every tree and dilapidated wooden shack.
Experienced players typically won’t die to the environment, but until you learn how to deal with each enemy, the Bayou is a hazardous place to traverse.
As of this writing in early 2024, Hunt: Showdown maintains a strong user base on Steam. The early balance issues have been addressed and tons of bugs have been fixed. It’s never difficult to find a match – something critical for a multiplayer shooter. Post-launch live support has been very strong, with regular events, new content (including additional bosses and an additional map), and a steady stream of cosmetic DLC.
given the age of the game!
Why it All Works
Hunt: Showdown’s post-ship story is a redemption tale of sorts – not as well-known as the comebacks of No Man’s Sky or Cyberpunk 2077, but a great example of a team plugging away at a live service title until it becomes something its fans love.
Today, in its mature 2024 form, there’s a lot for game designers to learn from Hunt: Showdown’s unique blend of mechanics and setting. While it doesn’t do everything perfectly, the things it does right are great.
It Rewards Smarts – A lot of multiplayer shooters are hard to get into for players who lack reflexes or pinpoint accuracy. Hunt: Showdown, while still rewarding skill, is excellent at rewarding thoughtful play as well.
Gunfire in Hunt is deadly; human players aren’t bullet sponges. Reading the terrain, thinking about your approach, situational awareness, and planning an ambush are the keys to success. If you outthink your opponent, you’ll win.
“Camping” is not only a viable strategy in the game – it’s expected. But the most accurate sniper, unless he gets lucky, is at some point going to have to get up close and personal. A new player waiting around a corner with the worst one-shot shotgun in the game has a chance to kill the highest-ranked player.
It’s Always Different – Hunt: Showdown can be played with a couple of friends, a single friend, or solo. The solo game feels like an entirely different game. As a solo player; without someone to watch your back, you’ll have to creep around the edges of conflict, picking off teams where you can, and using traps to protect your back.
And every match, whether you go in with a team or not, feels unique. Plenty of random vectors change how the game unfolds – different bosses, different clue locations, different pickups to find, different extraction zone locations, and different environmental enemies.
On top of that is added the chaos of other human players. Each match has up to eleven other players, but the starting placement and composition of those teams can vary. Maybe you and your two friends are facing three other teams of three; maybe it’s nine solo players.
Most likely, it’s a mix. Whenever you fight, you can never be 100% sure – was that a solo sniper you just took down, or is her buddy hiding in the nearby treeline waiting to save her as soon as you look away?
Audio is Crucial to Gameplay – One of the things that makes Hunt: Showdown truly unique is how important sound is to the experience. In so many games, audio is almost an afterthought, but in Hunt: Showdown, if you’re ignoring the noises around you, you’re never going to get better.
Knowing where other hunters are is half the battle, and the sounds you hear – if you stop and listen – will cue you into their location long before you spot them.
Maybe a hunter stumbles into a compound and tosses a dynamite stick at a pack of undead; maybe he alerts a flock of birds or ducks; maybe he shoots his gun unnecessarily.
Similarly, listening closely will alert you to environmental hazards ahead. Maybe you hear the familiar insect buzzing of a Hive, a dangerous enemy that loudly shrieks when she spots you. Maybe it’s the heavy stomp of a Meathead, a tough but blind opponent that’s easier to avoid than fight.
Or, if you’re lucky, maybe you’ll hear the running footsteps of another hunter behind a flimsy wooden wall – and, yes, a high-penetration shot will blast right through that wood and take out your enemy, if you time it right.
It has Great Environments – Though there are only three maps in the game, they are big, well-designed, and varied. There’s plenty of room for the twelve players in each round to spread out, approach targets from different angles, and set ambushes.
I’ve spawned near Blanchett Graves,
which is usually a deathtrap.
Individual landmarks on the map are each unique, flavorful, and interesting to fight over – dilapidated fisheries, old mines, churches with graveyards, flooded towns, and the aforementioned ruined prison. If it’s something you might see in the backwoods of Louisiana after a zombie apocalypse, you’ll find it in Hunt: Showdown.
The Setting is Evocative – In a world filled with shooters set in modern times – from the yearly iteration of Call of Duty to the popular extraction shooter Escape from Tarkov – Hunt: Showdown’s uniquely horrific 1895 setting stands out.
The developers have done a superb job making sure every part of the game feels right. From the haunting songs that play between matches, to the varied and interesting character design, to the pile of odd but plausible fictional guns, to the rewardingly gruesome melee animations, it’s an immersive experience through and through.
For a shooter, Hunt: Showdown has an impressive quantity and quality of lore to support its world. Every cosmetic DLC skin has launched with a detailed backstory about the character, often with an accompanying YouTube video. As players complete matches and fight the various environmental enemies, they’ll gradually unlock more and more tidbits about the world of the game and how it got into its rotting, dismal state.
Not Perfect, but Unique
Hunt: Showdown isn’t without its flaws. Matchmaking can be slow; load times are sluggish even on good hardware. Years after launch, the game is plagued by several common and irritating bugs. As in many modern competitive shooters, cheaters sometimes ruin a match.
Further, if you’re the type of player who doesn’t care for cosmetic DLC and battle passes as a monetization model, Hunt: Showdown will exhaust you with a steady stream of new content. Though the game is generous with free currency and it’s possible to grind for anything you truly want, there’s still a lot to spend money on.
Finally, despite the addition of a scripted single-player tutorial, the game is hard to learn. New players are bound to be frustrated by their first few matches as they struggle to find the rhythm of the game.
Still, for me at least, Hunt: Showdown was worth climbing that initial learning cliff. The game offers a blend of elements that you simply can’t find anywhere else. Every match is engaging, and I’m still constantly surprised by the game after my first hundred hours. It’s well worth playing for any designer interested in the shooter genre.
On my birthday, my long-suffering family finally played Hunt: Showdown with me after hearing me sing its praises for months. Shooters are not my wife’s preferred genre, and my son prefers the faster pace of games like Ultrakill, but they gave it a go for me.
My son was done after a single round, but my wife stuck it out for a couple more, even getting her first kill of an enemy hunter.
I’d better get off this path…
In our final match, we found ourselves deep in the catacombs beneath an old church, fighting the Spider – one of the game’s bosses, a nasty fast-moving creature that would give anyone with arachnophobia nightmares for weeks.
We dipped in and out of the area where the Spider lurked – dodging its poison spit, chucking fire bombs into its path, and squeezing off a few poorly aimed shots when we could. I blocked up the side corridors with concertina traps, figuring they’d give us plenty of warning if a lurking enemy team tried to steal our kill.
At one point, as we ground the Spider down, I noticed one of the traps had been tripped. Barbed wire choked the corridor – had the boss blundered into it? In the excitement of the ongoing fight with the Spider, I didn’t stop to investigate.
But I should have. As the Spider died to a final hail of gunfire, I glanced down the dark passage to my right – just in time to see a thrown stick of dynamite arcing through the air, landing directly at my feet.
Boom. My wife and I both died instantly. I spectated through the eyes of our killer for a minute, watching him casually jog up to the Spider’s corpse and claim his prize.
Post-match, looking at the player list, I noticed our opponent was a solo player – either a skilled solo player or a really lucky one. I never caught a glimpse of him or heard him make a sound until the dynamite came flying out of the darkness.
My wife was done after that. As I mentioned, Hunt: Showdown is a frustrating experience a lot of the time. Like any competitive shooter, you have to lose a lot before you start to win.
But I wasn’t frustrated. Honestly, I was grinning after that dynamite blast. That player had a great moment.
Hats off to you, fellow hunter – whoever you are. You were patient. You bided your time. You chucked that dynamite at the exact right moment. I’m sure it felt great to wipe out a pair of rival hunters in one throw, then waltz in and grab the trophy for free.
You experienced a great moment that few other shooters deliver as well.
So yeah. I’m bad at Hunt: Showdown. But I keep playing it.
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