It’s not unheard of for an in-development game to go missing for long stretches of time, but it’s not typically a good sign. This was the case for Hunt: Horrors of the Gilded Age, a cooperative third-person shooter from Crytek. Originally announced in June 2014, you’d be forgiven if now, three years later, you have forgotten about it. Well, against the odds, Horrors of the Gilded Age has resurfaced as Hunt: Showdown.
Besides the 30-second teaser shown above, the game’s official site is bare. But from that brief trailer, which may or may not be an in-game cinematic, we can tell that Showdown is quite a bit different than Horrors of the Gilded Age. The teaser shows two hunters creeping through an ominous cavern where they are quickly ambushed and made to be the hunted. The wording indicates that Showdown will be a two person co-op adventure, while Horrors of the Gilded Age featured hectic four-player co-op.
While we know nothing more than what little is shown in the trailer, it wouldn’t be surprising to find out that many of the original ideas have been abandoned. Horrors of the Gilded Age was presented as a free to play title with large arena-style levels and randomized hordes of enemies.
It seems that Crytek has at least managed to salvage the core premise of Horrors of the Gilded Age in Showdown, but given the game’s tumultuous development cycle, it’s amazing that any of the game’s ideas have remained in the pipeline at all.
When Vigil Games went out of business in 2013, Crytek brought on David L. Adams, the director of Darksiders, to lead Crytek’s new Austin, Texas, studio, Crytek USA. Horrors of the Gilded Age was the studio’s first project, but shortly after it was announced, Crytek closed down the studio amidst financial troubles, and moved development to its headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany. Around the same time, Kotaku reported that Crytek wasn’t paying its employees on time. Adams left Crytek shortly after the studio was shut down and founded Gunfire Games. After that, Horrors of the Gilded Age went dark, and we presumed it had been scrapped.
