I’m currently backed into a corner, eyes and pistol trained on a doorway, while the current owner of the spaceship is swearing. There is literally a button which makes your character swear and which, like the commands ‘stay’ and ‘cover me!’, can be pressed once to issue them in a whisper, or twice to shout them. The colourful language of the current ship’s captain however is more than just a taunt: he’s trying to lure me out. You see, he knows I’m here, but not quite sure where.
It’s his own fault, anyway. There I was, sedately piloting my small Rustbucket (the most basic ship in the game) towards the facility’s docking stations, when he attacked. (Well, I might have taken an idle pot-shot at him, but still.) A few salvos later, and my hull had been breached and my engines are offline. Releasing the ship’s controls, I briefly contemplate racing to the engine room to see if I could put out the fire, but decide it may be more fun to simply head for the escape pods. Small, fast and manoeuvrable, they also sport the ability to ram enemy ships and let you board them.
Deciding that racing up the stairs to the cockpit would probably be the quickest way to cop a bullet to the head, I instead dart to the side. The captain could hear me running about below him, and I could hear him moving to get into position. Both of us evidently have the same idea: find a nice corner where you couldn’t be ambushed with only one way in, and wait for your opponent to come to you. Hence the swearing. After half a minute more of this expletive-laden game of cat-and-mouse, I decide I’d try a different tack. You see, this ship was a Rustbucket as well, so I know the layout, and that there are two staircases in the engine room. Carefully and slowly moving past the staircase, so as not to make a noise and not expose any part of me to enemy fire, I creep towards the engine room. Carefully making my way up the stairs, I see the other end of the ship, the two doors that lead to the cockpit, as well as the central stairwell that I had deliberately avoided. What I can’t see is the enemy captain, who had now grown ominously quiet.
Leaning carefully around the doorway, I try to ascertain whether he is lurking somewhere off to the side, still covering the central stairway. Inching forwards slightly, I find him. Unfortunately, he has anticipated my move, and is hiding to the side of the engine room doors. Bugger. Wheeling around, I am not fast enough, and the last thing I hear before ending looking at the ceiling is the blast of his shotgun. Oh well, time to start another raid!
Marauders is perhaps one of the most tense, and immersive games that I’ve come across. A player-v-player-v-environment (PvPvE) game, the premise is straightforward: in a grim, alternate future, mankind has destroyed the Earth, and taken to the stars with a ragtag collection of WW2 and 1980’s level technology. Survivors of the conflict, allied to no faction or government, live by raiding the various outposts left to humanity. Cast as a Marauder, and playable with up to four friends, the player’s goal is to loot the enemy facility, kill anyone who gets in their way (and loot them), and escape. Simple, but boy does it deliver!
In the first place, getting to the enemy facility isn’t as easy as it seems. You first have to fly your ship (whether a humble Rustbucket or something grander you’ve crafted yourself) to the facility and dock, which isn’t quite so simple if another player is in the vicinity and decides it might be fun to engage in exchanging broadsides. Should you lose the exchange, you can still make it to the escape pods and try to board the enemy ship, or any ship that takes your fancy. Provided you manage to kill the crew, that ship then becomes yours. That is, if you manage to survive long enough to fly to the extraction point.
Assuming you’ve managed to land inside the facility, you then have limited time to search and loot anything of value (or which can be used to craft better weapons, armour, tools, or ships) before returning to your designated airlock, and flying to the extraction point. If you die at any point, that’s it. Everything you brought on the raid or acquired – right down to the ship you’re flying – is lost.
With such high stakes, you really don’t relax until you’ve managed to safely fly away. Adding to this is the minimal HUD and low-tech approach which means players have to rely heavily upon their senses, memory, and spacial awareness for survival. Whenever on approach to a raid, I found myself continually scanning my surroundings, looking for telltale signs of movement, or the dull thuds which spoke of ships trading fire. Once on foot, this only gets more intense. Sound in Marauders is masterfully implemented, and you’ll find yourself stopping to listen for the sound of footsteps, trying to judge where they’re coming from, how quickly, and how many pairs of feet you can hear. Do you hide and attempt to get the drop on your foes or run away? Do you wait for them to move on and hope they pass you by? What about the sound of gunfire? Do you steer clear, or get closer, hoping to take down the survivors and nab the loot for yourself. Even looting bring risks, as it briefly ties up your ability to monitor and react to your environment.
Gunfights themselves are fast, and brutal. Defeat can come in the blink of an eye, but so too can exhilarating victory (especially when you manage to get the drop on several opponents). The lovingly modelled and animated WW2 weaponry (from MG42s to Sten guns), with the thud of their firing and the vicious zipping sounds bullets make as they pass all too close for comfort (or a wince-inducing ‘whang!’ they make as they ricochet off walls) gives combat a level of intensity that I’ve not seen in any other game.
Even if you manage to survive the firefights, you’ve still got to get back to your own airlock, and your own ship. Head to the wrong airlock, and it won’t open. So along with straining every nerve in your body to ensure you don’t get ambushed by enemies (or run out of ammunition), you’ve also got to try to remember the way back. On more than one occasion I found myself running from airlock to airlock, hoping that I might find the right one before I met my untimely demise, or was forced to use one of the facility’s escape pods and try to hijack another ship.
If you like this kind of thing (and I do), it is utterly exhilarating. Win or lose, I found myself more than ready to jump back into another raid to see how well I could do, and whether my luck would hold.
Even in its Early Access state, Marauders already shows all the marks of being a masterpiece, and is deliciously tense, utterly immersive, and a delight to play. Highly, highly recommended. ■