Bad Guitar Studio, the developer behind FragPunk, just revealed that ‘Farlands’, an all-new, massive ‘delivery-driven PvPvE adventure’, will launch in early access on November 5th. It’s essentially Death Stranding as an extraction shooter, promising high-stakes engagements with ‘opportunistic’ players, wildlife clashes, and a large sandbox map to explore.
The trailer the team revealed recently smacks of generative AI, which is the first issue, but to give the team credit, they’re trying to innovate to revive a failing game. At the time of writing, FragPunk was barely holding on to 700 concurrent players on Steam.
FragPunk Farlands Coming Soon
FragPunk launched last year as a free-to-play hero shooter with a unique mechanic that sees players using cards to ‘break the rules of combat’ and introduce all kinds of features and abilities to the battlefield. It’s a colourful, high-octane title that did well at release and scored some good reviews, but it hasn’t stood the test of time well.
On Steam, it managed a peak player count of 113,946 users, which isn’t at all shabby. But at the time of writing, FragPunk was pulling in just 735 players.
But Bad Guitar Studio, the team behind the game, isn’t keeping those eggs in one basket. They’ve come up with something new to potentially pull players in, and it has been dubbed ‘Farlands’. It’s a ‘delivery-driven adventure’ game that features PvPvE combat, an evolving world, and mechanics that make you think of nothing but Death Stranding.
In fact, it’s bizarrely reminiscent of Death Stranding, right down to the changing weather, how you carry packages, and how you upgrade your gear and interact with the world around you. For instance, as you become a better delivery person, you can get ‘mech legs’ and similar traversal tools.
Bad Guitar has said that ‘dozens of players’ will share the arena, and that ‘social tension’ will be constant. You can betray anybody you want and secure their packages, blocking their deliveries and eliminating them from the game. You go in, you scavenge, you complete missions, and you eliminate or team up with other players.
But then you need to ‘haul home’ the resources you capture to upgrade your base, vehicle, and gear.
I don’t know; that sounds like an extraction game to me, right?
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Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
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