Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene changed the entire course of gaming in 2017 with the release of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, now known nonsensically as PUBG Battlegrounds. (Plunkbat forever.) Without it–for good or ill–we may not have Fortnite, one of the most successful games ever. PUBG isn’t doing too badly itself, with more than half a million people playing at least once every day. Now, Greene is hoping to revitalize the survival genre with Prologue, developed over the last four years and today revealing a surprise free open beta.
Reminiscent of games from the survival sim heyday, Prologue drops its players in a woodland cabin and challenges them to find their way to a weather station, randomly placed on the sprawling 8-by-8km map. Along the way, you’ll be bombarded by weather extremes and hungry wildlife, while needing to keep yourself fed, watered and warm. Which, while certainly a familiar premise if you played The Long Dark or The Forest, is aiming for a different emphasis. Prologue appears to be aiming for the extremes of isolation, a sense of agoraphobic loneliness in its procedurally generated maps.
Plus, of course, this comes with the pedigree. Greene may have moved on from PUGB, hence the title now only containing his nickname’s initials, but PlayerUnknown Productions comes with a lot of expectation. And then a lot of confusing rhetoric about “metaverses” and the like. But if you want to find out exactly what the game’s about, well, you can right now! For free!
Available on both Steam and Epic, the Prologue: Go Wayback! playtest lets you download and play the game ahead of its Early Access launch intended for later this year. To get it on Steam, head to the store page (the “go wayback” title, which hopefully isn’t permanent, at least makes it possible to search for) and then click on the “Request Access” button beneath the demo link. You’ll instantly get in, and will find the game available to install at the top of your Steam library. I’m downloading it as I type.
