Today, Guerrilla Games has finally unveiled its upcoming online co-op action game: Horizon Hunters Gathering. Announced over four years ago, the game indeed features the stylized, slightly cartoonish look players got a glimpse of in early 2023 with the footage leak. It's undoubtedly a big departure from the main series' trademark highly realistic visuals, and it remains to be seen whether it will resonate with fans. Visually, at least, the MMORPG Horizon Steel Frontiers, in development at NCSoft, certainly looks more similar to the main games.
Anyway, first and foremost, Guerrilla's Game Director Arjan Bak reassured fans that they're not going to stop making new single player Horizon games. However, the team wanted to try something different this time around.
In the game, players form the titular Gathering, an elite crew of hunters serving as the last line of defense against machines that grow more dangerous by the day. The narrative is fully canon within the Horizon universe, introducing new characters, threats, and mysteries that expand the world's lore beyond what we know from Horizon Zero Dawn, Horizon Forbidden West, and the VR exclusive Horizon Call of the Mountain.
The launch roster of Horizon Hunters Gathering will feature diverse hunter types, such as soldiers who hold the line, infiltrators who operate from the shadows, champions who shine in battle, mercenaries with checkered pasts, and veterans seeking one final mission. The very first small-scale closed playtest will take place at the end of this month, and you can sign up for it via the PlayStation Beta program. This test build will include three hunters: Rem, Sun, and Axel, each offering distinct combat approaches, including classic roles such as tank, support, and tactician, and teamwork dynamics. Guerrilla plans to continue expanding the roster over time through post-launch content updates.
Unlike the single player games, Horizon Hunters Gathering has been designed for team-based encounters. As such, to succeed in combat, you'll need to read enemy movements, time your party's attacks, and coordinate squad abilities to defeat the most powerful machines. Guerrilla even introduced a roguelite build system that lets players collect perks, weapon upgrades, and stat enhancements after each machine encounter, encouraging experimentation with power-up combinations tailored to specific challenges.
At launch, Horizon Hunters Gathering will allow players to explore four large environments, each with unique atmospheres and squad challenges. The Hunter's Gathering serves as the central hub. It's a customizable campsite where teams upgrade gear, adjust loadouts, and prepare for expeditions before venturing into the wilds.
The first playtest includes two mission types designed around challenge and mastery:
- Machine Incursion tasks squads with repelling large-scale machine assaults on tribes, requiring coordination to collect randomized power-ups before confronting a relentless boss, all while a violent storm closes in.
- Cauldron Descent is a multi-stage dungeon where hunters take the offensive, choosing paths through brutal machine encounters and challenging obstacles that demand teamwork. Each cleared chamber provides power-ups that enable deeper descents and greater rewards.
The final game will include a story campaign that supports both solo play with NPCs and co-op with other players, but the narrative won't be available in the February playtest.
Horizon Hunters Gathering doesn't have a release date, but we know it will launch on PlayStation 5 and PC with full cross-play and cross-progression (provided you're using the same PlayStation account).
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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