The Cycle: Frontierhas experienced its highest player count after the release of its third season. The PvPvE first-person shooter game takes place on Fortuna III where prospectors, the name of its inhabitants, live in an orbiting space station where they can choose quests to complete on the dangerous alien planet in exchange for high-end loot, gear, and weapons.
The Cycle: Frontier’s action is backed up by its lore, which lead producer Matt Lightfoot described to Game Rant in a recent interview.
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What Drove People Off Fortuna III
Fortuna III is suspected to be a rock that was terraformed by aliens, and the Federation tried colonizing it for its high-paying resources. However, that only lasted for so long as the planet began to become more hostile with creatures that grew more aggressive andan unpredictable, deadly thunderstormthat came in cycles.
Think of that as almost a thunderstorm on steroids and the storm that comes in is very deadly to players. You have lightning, it makes the world a lot darker, so you can’t see threats further away. That’s what drove people off the planet in the lore, and that drove them to Prospect Station.
The Beauty Within The Alien Planet
Aside from its ugly creatures and violent risks,Lightfoot said that there is beauty inThe Cycle: Frontier. While in Prospect Station, players can choose to spawn into one of three maps: Bright Sands, Crescent Falls, and Tharis Island. Bright Sands is divided into areas like hot springs, farmland, and mushroomland. Crescent Falls is the largest map and has the most diverse range of biomes that includes grasslands, swamp, and oceanside. Tharis Island is the newest map, and is a small remote island with abandoned faction bases and a labyrinthian cave system. Different creatures roam different locations and pose specific threats.
They’re very vibrant. All of the different areas have different threats and also different opportunities. Some items that you might be looking for on some quests will take you to specific areas that are high risk, and you will only be able to find items where they would logically be on the planet. It’s about being able to really provide an intuitive way for players to navigate the map, but also to be able to provide different threats and also different challenges.
We have some areas that are open and almost rolling fields, and there’s no cover, but equally we have pretty dense jungles that offer lots of hiding opportunities. That means that players have to maybe be slightly more slow and methodical if they don’t want to attract unwanted attention.
The Cycle: Frontierisfree-to-play and has worked to solve issuesthat its community raised concerns about from its previous two seasons, so lapsed players may want to give Season 3 a try.
