The time is finally upon us. Yager’s The Cycle: Frontier, the promising sci-fi take on Escape from Tarkov, has a release date. After two major closed beta tests, the developer finally revealed that PC players on Steam, and the Epic Games Store will be able to drop in on June 8.
This is when the pre-season begins, effectively a soft launch for the highly-anticipated shooter. The first season will kick off in earnest two weeks later: on June 22, bringing with it the first battle pass.
Despite a lack of blowout ads and sponsored streams, the game has found success organically on Twitch, as well as Steam. At the time of this writing, Frontier is Steam’s most-wishlisted free-to-play game. Both beta tests were limited, but they still managed to grab over 900,000 players.
The Cycle: Frontier is a PvEvP shooter in the emerging genre of extraction royale. Unlike traditional battle royale, the stakes are significantly higher, as players must extract from the match alive or risk losing their acquired loot. Outside of the shooting and looting, players can invest their earned riches on passive upgrades, and a wide range of craftable weapons and tools.
Frontier aims to be a lighter, less punishing take on that formula. It offers true matchmaking, for one, designed to get players with a similar rate of successful extractions together. It also has a more simplified ammo and armour system, a clear map that shows points of interest and extraction zones, and more besides.
Frontier is an evolution of The Cycle, one of the pioneers of the PvEvP genre. Though the original game did find some success, it ultimately wasn’t enough to keep Yager going. The studio ended up killing it in favour of Frontier, and it’s so far looking like that was the right call.
If you’re intrigued, you’ll be able to download the game in two weeks on Steam and the EGS – and you can wishlist it today.