Amazon's free-to-play hero shooter Crucible has a May release date
Prove your worth, Guardian.
Crucible comes out on PC via Steam on 20th May 2020, Amazon has announced.
The free-to-play hero shooter is Amazon's first big video game launch, and comes ahead of the release of its MMO New World, and its video game streaming service Project Tempo.
Crucible is developed by Relentless Studios, the Seattle-based development team of Amazon Games. Relentless, which is run by Westwood Studios co-founder Louis Castle, was meant to release Crucible in March but Amazon's plans were delayed by the coronavirus outbreak.
Crucible has a lineup of 10 playable characters, each with unique weapons and abilities, as well as three game modes: Heart of the Hives, Harvester Command, and Alpha Hunters. Heart of the Hives sees two four-player teams fight bosses that spawn on the map. Each boss has a heart, and it's the first team to capture three hearts that wins the match. Harvester Command is two teams of eight capturing and holding harvesters. In Alpha Hunters, eight teams of two fight to be the final team standing. In each match you collect a resource called Essence, which is used to level up the characters.
The video below shows off gameplay. There's third-person shooting and melee combat in a sci-fi setting.
Meanwhile, New World, Amazon's MMO set on a supernatural continent in the 17th century, is due out in August 2020. There's also a The Lord of the Rings MMO in the works. In April, The New York Times reported Amazon executives had hoped to release its gaming platform, codenamed Project Tempo, at some point in 2020, but because of the outbreak it may be pushed into 2021.