Creative Assembly's extraction shooter Hyenas gets a playable alpha tomorrow

Total War and Alien Isolation studio Creative Assembly has been working away at Hyenas for some time now. It's a PvPvE extraction shooter set on a planet where the wealthy have decamped to Mars (hooray) and left everyone else to fight to the death on a hostile planet (goddamnit). At the Future Games Show today, a new playable character was revealed: Hero-Ki, who is a cosplayer. More importantly, he can transform himself to resemble his foes.

He'll be one of the playable characters available during the next Hyenas alpha test, which is apparently its biggest so far. It offers a meaty ten days to put the game through its paces, and you can sign up here. It kicks off tomorrow, and given Creative Assembly's pedigree, it's probably worth a shot.

As for Hero-Ki, here's some more info: "Armed with a specially modified camera to capture a target's likeness and cosplay as them, Hiro-Ki can use his penchant for disguise to evade threats and exploit the environment in HYENAS, as only the sharpest-eyed rival will be able to detect the clues that reveal him as an imposter."

Mollie saw a 20 minute preview of Hyenas back in September, and wasn't very appreciative of the game's "metacringe" (it does sound cringey). Still, if you can suffer Borderlands you'll probably be able to suffer this, especially if you're a fan of publisher Sega, whose legacy is rife in the game: you even use ye olde Mega Drives to breach doors.

Some other important Hyenas facts: five "raiding crews" compete at once to discover and hack into secured vaults, and not only will you need to fight off other human players, but there are AI baddies too. There are zero-g zones, some of which can be toggled on and off, which kinda reminds me of Lawbreakers.

Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.