This one is a bit of a wild ride, friends, so bear with me here. One game has broken up into three pieces, each of which are in different states of release, and all of which are originally birthed from a failed attempt at a wholly different sandbox MMO that is now under some dubious stewardship. That’s the briefing, but let’s break down the full launch of survival sandbox New Frontier, the early access launch of battle royale title Magnificent 5, and a new spinoff game known as New Frontier: Zombies.
First, New Frontier has officially stepped out of early access and is fully free-to-play on Steam. This survival sandbox lets players take up the role of cowboys in a steampunk world with aliens and monsters. Many of its beats sound familiar to the sub-genre, with base-building and crafting, but there’s also public events and magical storms. The most recent changelog provides some more information on what’s currently in the game.
That same changelog also references Magnificent 5, which is the battle royale portion of the game. A dev announcement confirmed that this game has made it to early access, while a forum post from December 17th gives some more details on how this mode operates. Currently, Magnificent 5 is only available through the New Frontier launcher and is due to arrive to Steam at a later time.
Finally, there’s New Frontier: Zombies, a new spinoff that was unveiled on December 11th. This game is less about survival against aliens and other players and more about survival against zombies. There are some noteworthy changes between New Frontier and Zombie mode beyond the enemy types, though, such as the way zones work, the removal of auto-repair, and a season pass-like Campaigns feature. An ETA on when this mode will go live is yet to be decided.
All of this spun originally off of Wild West Online, which released in May of 2018 after some decidedly bumpy development and attempted to make a “soft relaunch” in July that same year, which practically collapsed 612 Games. The studio was rescued, however, by Sergey Titov’s Free Reign Entertainment, which led to the original split into a survival sandbox and battle royale mode. Except it apparently didn’t help develop these things until it decided to reskin itself wholesale in May 2019 according to a Facebook post in July 2019.
I need a nap.
