Developer Volstok has just released the brand-new trailer for their latest title: A Battle Royale game by the name of “Fear The Wolves”.
The trailer is mostly your standard Battle Royale mix: You parachute in, secure some gear, and engage in firefights with enemy players. Where it starts to differentiate itself, however, is its tone.
First, the trailer is set in first person, a likely intentional decision that means the game will also be set in first person. This means players won’t get as much situational awareness, which will likely lead to a slower-paced but more tactical experience.
But there’s a chance this isn’t quite true: In the trailer, when the player starts sprinting, they move very quickly – almost inhumanly fast. But this only happens while the player is sprinting, which could mean that the sprint screen has been accelerated to speed up the gameplay.
There’s also the sound of a Geiger counter going off in the background, hinting that players will have to watch out for their environment as they make their way around the game’s map, which is set in a deserted and highly irradiated Chernobyl.
Fear The Wolves has a few other differentiating features as well: First, there’s the titled “Wolves”, and players should be right to fear them: These speedy, deadly hounds are irradiated computer-controlled mutant dogs that roam the map, attacking any nearby player. Even if a player manages to shoot the “Wolf” before it gets to them, their gunshots will give off their positions to all nearby players, who will now have a bead on their positions. The game also hints at special “irradiated zones” from inside of the playable map, stating that the best loot will be located within these zones, but only players with Hazmat suits can enter these zones without fear of death by radiation. A recent press release also hints that Hazmat suits may allow you to survive in the radiation storm – the term the game uses for its ever-advancing death wall that has become a staple in Battle Royale titles, possibly opening up for additional combat opportunities, flanking routes, and more.
But even more interesting is the game’s unique extraction mechanic, seen briefly in the trailer as a helicopter approaches the combat zone. Every match, one player (and only one) will have the opportunity to board that helicopter, extract, and instantly win the match. It is unclear how this mechanic will function, but it’s doubtful the chopper will simply appear at a point in the map, granting a lucky player an undeserved victory. It’s also doubtful that the chopper will appear near the end of a game in the very center of the final circle, as it would serve anticlimactic if a player were to win by skipping out on the final fight and instead flee through a helicopter. However it is implemented, another method that could be used to achieve victory will be a welcome change to help spice up the Battle Royale genre.
Horror and Battle Royale are two genres that make a surprising amount of sense together. In fact, Battle Royale games are almost as scary as many horror games without even trying to be, due to the penalties that a death imposes on a player combined with the unpredictable nature of an open combat arena. A player could be walking around in the peaceful open world, surviving as one of the final ten members on a map, only to be suddenly assaulted from nowhere. The lethality of the threat, combined with its unknown location, combined with them being fully eliminated on death makes the prospect of defeat very scary. Mix in horror elements with this already bubbling mix of natural fear, and Cry of Wolves has the chance to be a uniquely chilling experience.