THIS GAME IS CURRENTLY IN EARLY ACCESS. ALL IMPRESSIONS OF THE GAME ARE BASED ON THAT BUILD AND MAY BE IMPROVED OR ALTERED BY THE TIME OF WIDER RELEASE.

Marauders
Platform: PC (Steam)
Developer: Small Impact Games
Publisher: Team17
Release Date: Oct. 3

When it works, Marauders is a rush.

There’s a gritty tenseness to the game, a sense that death could be around any corner, that you have to balance scavenging and looting with quick firefights between players. That if you engage, that if you decide not to leave someone alone as they run through the halls, it could cost you everything. It’s an excellent atmosphere, a kind of Elite by way of the Verdun games, only compounded by the worn-down used-future aesthetic of things (you’re basically wearing World War II bunny suits and gasmasks and carrying submachine guns) and fact that death can be incredibly punishing not just one time, but each successive time down the line.

But there’s that qualifier. When it works. And therein lies the problem with Marauders

Couldn’t get an image of the opening sequence, so the contract screen will have to suffice

In an alternate 1990s, the Great War only continued, extending into space as humanity rapidly industrialized the solar system and then more or less abandoned the people left out there to their own devices. Into this landscape of rusting hulks, malfunctioning spaceships, and abandoned asteroid mining operations steps a new class of criminal. Outlaws in barely functional ships prowl the outer reaches of space, looking to loot as much as they can, either from the existing resources or from rival crews also looking to make a quick buck scavenging the stars. They are supplied and hindered by four factions, everyone from pirates to the Allies planning on making a quick buck off of the brutal scavenging runs. It’s a cruel world out there, and it’s going to take every last inch of luck, cunning, and ruthlessness to survive.

Marauders is almost brutally simple in its execution. You drop into each match with a time limit of 24 minutes onboard your rusted-out hulk of a spaceship, enroute to one of several locations full of loot. Your job is to loot everything you can find, kill anyone that tries to gun you down, and escape on your spaceship (or one of the escape pods) to the closest exit gate. Survive, and you make your way back to base with your loot in time to do it again. Die, and you lose all your equipment and inventory, instead needing to buy more weapons and armor so you can go on another raid. You can even crew with up to three friends and raid as a team, though it’s always good to be careful, since friendly fire is definitely a thing (to the three people I crewed up with, I am supremely sorry, but good work on taking me out).

This results in a lovely tension in gameplay— there’s not a moment to rest, you have to keep moving and keep a constant eye on your surroundings and nearby footsteps, wondering if you have time to loot that body or if the homicidal maniac in the German infantry helmet is lurking right around the corner waiting for you to make a mistake. It’s a game of tense, paranoid, and very short shootouts, coupled with its rather slim resource management and the massive penalties on death. It resulted in some awesome moments, like a stealthy gunfight in the middle of a naval base, exchanging gunfire from the top of an observation deck with rival marauders on the ground floor, each brief glimpse peppered with the exchange of submachine gun bursts in the dark. It also resulted in some moments of dark comedy as one player repeatedly chased me around a level with a knife, swinging wildly, while another decided to just straight-up murder the two of us despite it being clear I had nothing to loot, hellbent on keeping me from playing any more of the game, period.

This tension also extends to the space segments, as you have to get to the place you’re going to loot. This can result in an equally anxiety-inducing time as you try to maneuver your craft through fields of anti-aircraft defenses and potentially other player ships, flak bursting all around you as you try to make it to the target, hoping to get out in one piece. Adding another degree of complexity, you can even use your escaping pod to ram into ships and breach them, hijacking them for your own private collection and then taking them out on raids. The whole thing is an immensely satisfying risk-and-reward system, balancing you pressing your luck against greater rewards and the chance of winning back some of what you lose if a run goes sour. The spaceflight is also gorgeous, putting you high above a planet with a day-night scheme and various objects in levels of disrepair all for your viewing pleasure, giving you an area to hide in as well as potential locations where others can ambush you.

Furthermore, the enemy AI is great, behaving like players and using the map to the fullest. There were numerous times where I was sure I’d racked up player kills on a run, only to find out that I’d only killed a bunch of NPCs. They’re good at defending corners, peeking out, and setting up ambushes, as good as any player would be.

But there’s an unspoken qualifier to all of that, and we’re unfortunately going to have to get into it. “When it works.”

When you actually get into the game, when you’re in the moment, when you’re trying to figure out the next tense, tactical firefight or hoping the other bastard gives you an opening you can fill with a hail of bullets, it’s brilliant, an immersive, white-knuckle ride through an alternate history with a vibe rivaling the best used-future sci-fi. It’s one part skin-of-your-teeth looter, one part “how underhanded can I be” shooter, one part space-dogfight adventure, all of it tenser than the best psychological horror game.

When you don’t, you end up spending twenty minutes catching up on your reading, attempting to join the two or three crews in your region left unprotected by passwords, or otherwise passing the time in a different window while the queue time ticks ever upward (my record was half an hour). It’s odd that a game that’s barely been played for a day or two would have a community this insular and a latency this high, but congratulations, Marauders, I think you set the land speed record, partly due to how teeth-clenchingly tense the game can get. Within moments of play, I was introduced to the lobby screen, where I spent way too much of my playtime, either hanging out in the “crew” section waiting to be kicked or for the host to dissolve the room because too few people showed up; or alternately spending my time waiting for the game to get through the agonizing matchmaking screen so I could enter the agonizing loading screen for quick play.

This continued for another eight or nine minutes before it timed out

There’s also a definite balance issue. If you find yourself losing, and believe me, that happens just as often as a win, you can quickly find yourself on the wrong side of the meta, unable to buy the weapons and equipment to stay competitive. At the beginning of each raid you start unequipped, you are given the most basic of loadouts, but usually against a player with even starting equipment, you might as well be firing a squirt gun against ordinance. I understand this is fundamental to the nature of the game and the risk management therein, but in a multiplayer setting where someone’s inclined to die a lot, death has to be cheaper. I’m reminded of Verdun, an astonishingly lethal shooter where a well-placed rifle shot could end someone, but where death was just cheap enough— you lost your character, sure, but it took maybe a few clicks to put you back on the game map and ending someone else with a rifle shot. The odds never felt astronomical, but at the same time, you never felt like the game was beating the everloving tar out of you for losing.

If they work out the kinks— which I think this early-access period is definitely doing as we go— then this could be the next really cool cult shooter, a game that pretty much guarantees a devoted fanbase and with some definite challenge for those at any skill level. When it’s brilliant, Marauders is freaking brilliant. I cannot stress that enough, I love driving my rustbucket through the skies and trying to ambush someone’s bigger, more expensive ship in 3D space, or sneaking around a commando base hoping I can get a lucky shot or two off before someone’s paying attention and eventually get a submachine gun that means I can actually win a firefight.

But right now, unfortunately, they have a couple of hurdles and some pretty big ifs they need to take care of.

The Good:
- Tight, tense, white-knuckle combat
- Equally tense and tactical 3D space dogfighting
- Excellent scavenging mechanics
- Focused, pinpoint gunplay
- Beautiful visuals
- Almost humanlike AI

The Bad:
- Queue latency long enough you can read books in between finding matches
- Community is already incredibly insular, making it hard to find groups if you don’t already have friends playing the game
- Die too often, and you fall off the game’s difficulty cliff

Final Score:

Marauders - Early Access Look