New Hunt: Showdown Map Enters Beta Phase for Update 3.0

Today Crytek announced the release of Update 3.0 for its Early Access first person multiplayer bounty hunting game Hunt: Showdown. The update contains NVIDIA highlights as well as many changes intended to improve the overall user experience, the biggest of which are the addition of a new Louisiana map—called Lawson Delta—for Beta testing, skill-based matchmaking.

Hunt: Showdown Update 3.0

The Lawson Delta map debuted at TwitchCon 2018 and the new map also contains a brand new Time of Day setting: Daylight. Under the unforgivingly bright light of the afternoon sun, players will need more stealth than ever to succeed. The updated skill-based matchmaking system is based on the Elo rating used in chess and should solve many of the past issues players have experienced. Update 3.0 also includes free tier 1 Hunters (replacing Tier 0 Hunters—and equipped with gear that cannot be resold), weapons looting, a cash register sandbox feature, and one new weapon: the Nagant Officer Brawler. Via the addition of NVIDIA Highlights, players will also be able to capture and share their most exciting moments from the match.

Hunt: Showdown Game Trailer Video

Alongside Update 3.0, Crytek has released a new Hunt: Showdown Developer Diary, in which Hunt team members explore the thought process behind the creation of Lawson Delta. “We wanted to make sure that the compound locations and their positions made sense in the world—that they didn’t just exist somewhere because we needed them there, but because that is where they would naturally have been built,” says Level Design Director Chris Auty. With geographical realism in mind, the team began to flesh out the map, and the Dev Diary takes a deeper look at this process, while the footage gives players a closer look at some of the new maps’ compounds.