The Hunter is an upcoming free online hunting game developed by Just Cause developer Avalanche Studios in conjunction with publisher Emote. The game will be available on for PC at retail and will also get a console (unspecified which consoles) and mobile version sometime after the release of the PC version.
The game’s official web-site explains that The Hunter will unite traditional gaming with social networking. The game-world will be populated with all manner of realistic animals from small game to birds to “heavy weight” trophy targets such as bear, dear and elk. The biggest focus of the developers though is on community, and you’ll be able to interact via a web-interface and network with thousands of others playing the game at the same time as you. They hope people will chat with each other to make new friends, form groups, create rivalries, take part in competitions and tournaments against others or work together to complete “exciting challenges.”
The game will also allow you to share your experiences with others online by posting journal entries, videos and pictures of your latest trophies to the online community (presumably at the official web-site). There will also be leader boards on global and national levels, even allowing you to see who the best hunter in your town or city is.
They also promise that the social networking will extend to the gameplay itself. Allowing you to get hunting tips from other players, discover hidden stores where you can pick up new hunting kit, or find out who you need to befriend into order to unlock new missions and items. And as with a lot of things these days, The Hunter will also have embed tools for you to post your trophie details and such on social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace. It even supports RSS feeds and allows you to send messages to your mobile phone to keep you up to date with hunting news and the latest trophy accomplishments your friends have made.
The developers also promise that the game will stay updated with regular updates of new content including new missions, items hunting areas and animals, as well as new updates to the community features. Players will also be able to give the developers suggestions for what new features they want to see added to the game or community and the direction they want it to take in the future.
The game will even allow you to break hunting rules by becoming a poacher and shooting whatever animal you want! You’ll just need to be sure to watch out for the in-game wardens!
The beta for The Hunter is scheduled for next month and will supply gamers with social networking tools that will enable them to build a community of hunter fans online. Using a version of Avalanche’s in-house technology, the game will partly be played in a web browser. The developer has high hopes for the title as well with the goal being to create the best hunting game in the world.
“Emote is passionate about making this game as true to life as possible, so when it came to choosing a development partner, we wanted to ensure we were working with the best,” commented Morgan O’Rahilly, CEO of Emote Games. “We are currently in discussions with hunting communities across the US to develop long-term mutual partnerships with experts and suppliers to make The Hunter the world’s best hunting game.”
“Using our next-generation landscape engine we are able to recreate the ‘out in the field’ hunting experience that includes a wide range of weather, animal behavior and terrain that can be shared within the gaming community as well as across other popular social networks to extend this phenomenally rich game experience,” detailed Christofer Sundberg, founder of Avalanche.