Unbeknownst to most people outside of the Escape From Tarkov and Hunt: Showdown communities, a certain indie FPS has been in development for a while now, and it now appears to be nearing its public debut. The game is Marauders, a PvP shooter about space piracy, desperate boarding actions, and permadeath — of both player and loot.
In Marauders, players will embody space-bound bounty hunters in a dieselpunk universe where civilization has failed. Survival hinges on launching brutal raids aboard rusty spaceships, hoping to steal other people’s slightly-less-rusty spaceships. In terms of gameplay, Marauders lies somewhere between Sea of Thieves and Escape From Tarkov; the developer erroneously describes it as a looter shooter, which it decidedly isn’t. Players can embark on aforementioned raids either solo or in squads, and failing to extract results in complete loss of equipment and character upgrades. In between raids, players can customize and upgrade their spacecraft and inventory, and unlock upgrades for their pirate characters. Marauders is expected to launch a closed alpha playtest on Steam in the near future, and to enter early access sometime after that.
It’s important to note that Marauders will be distributed by embattled publisher Team17, which has recently come under fire for harboring a toxic and abusive workplace culture. Employees have reported heavy crunch for “terrible” pay, systematic mistreatment by management, and sexual harassment claims getting dismissed completely out of hand.
