Heads-up, folks, we got a new MMO acronym comin’ in hot: survival-open-world-crafting aka SOC. Will it stick? Well, Samar Studio’s new “SOC” called The Front sure hopes so, but it looks like a multiplayer survival shooter to us.
“The Front takes place in a post-apocalyptic sandbox landscape populated with zombie-like mutants and hostile factions. In another reality, a tyrannical empire has conquered the world and is enacting a global ‘citizen’ policy. Using monitoring devices, a ruthless will to kill, and advanced technology, the empire seeks to change mankind forever. Already stripped of their freedom, faith, and in many cases, life, humans are on the verge of finally losing that which they call home. The surviving members of humanity’s resistance are hoping to use time travel technology to return to the past and correct the course of history. On this war-torn land, players will engage imperial forces, exiles, and rebels in an epic battle that will determine the fate of humanity. In their fight to rewrite the world’s fate, players will explore ruins and enemy areas, craft weapons and equipment, build bases, pilot vehicles, battle the elements, and contend with fearsome foes.”
The Front’s press blast promises a game with 36 square km of territory, multiple biomes, a “realistic” diurnal cycle, varying weather, crafting, building, irrigation systems, traps, base defenses, vehicles, boats, and 10 “distinct survival indices, including hunger, thirst, hypothermia, and infection” – monitoring all that ought to keep you busy.
The game is set to launch for PC “later this year” and indeed is already up in Steam, where it is flagged as both a single-player title and an MMO.
If you’re wondering about Samar Studio, well, we were too because the studio’s website is dead as we type this, the legal policies on the game’s official site are super generic (to the point of revealing no country of origin), and social media accounts for the game are all brand-new. Here’s what the press release says (because googling it brings up a whole bunch of presumably unrelated businesses, including a kinda racy photography studio in India that is now in my search history, sigh):
“Samar Studio is a young and dynamic team from around the world with experience in developing shooting and survival games. They are dedicated to delivering innovative and captivating virtual experiences and are passionate about creating a unique shooting game product that utilizes cutting-edge technology to enhance the user experience. As avid shooting game enthusiasts, they aim to provide games that caters to all platforms. The Front will be their debut product.”
As it happens, we’ve seen way worse debuts, so hey, maybe this’ll be one to watch.
