Yep, it’s another extraction shooter. Only this time it’s promising a battleground for hundreds of players at once and instead has people driving vehicles around. Also it doesn’t appear to be PvPvE only. Miracle of miracles, right?
This is Devolve Online, an indie effort from a small team of five developers who have been working on the game for six years. Players are dropped into the central hub of Primordium, where they make an avatar and construct a vehicle, then head into the surface world to explore, find resource nodes, and fight enemies, all in an effort to loot and either bring it back to the hub or deploy a beacon to extract. The further out from the center of the map you go, the harder the enemies get, and once characters are killed, all of their loot is dropped for others to take.
Players can also group up with each other, and if a team member dies, they can hop into a turret seat of a surviving teammate’s vehicle to help out. As for progression, all items can be infinitely upgraded, though it does become harder after equipment reaches a soft cap.
Gameplay appears to be a mixture of PvE and PvP, but PvP players have to flag themselves if they want to duke it out with others, and even unflagged players can attack PvP targets. Furthermore, damage values and gear balancing is separated between PvE and PvP, with the latter being percentage-based in order to grant even new arrivals a chance to fight back against better-geared opponents.
In addition to these core gameplay loops, Devolve also has dungeons that players can delve, global event nodes that players can activate to call down challenges like boss fights, and hardcore servers where failure means total loss.
The game is considered by the devs to be in an alpha state and is available to download and play for free up to level 10. After that, successive progression will require a $30 purchase that also includes $35 worth of cash shop currency. On the subject of that cash shop, the devs promise it’s cosmetic-only. Lastly, the game is only available through its bespoke launcher but there are plans to release it on Steam after alpha is considered finished.
