668 - Neighbor of the Beast

Normally a fanboyish post such as this would mean that it would be paragraphs and paragraphs of stuff. However, if a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a multi-volume set, and four are worth one Encyclopedia Britannica.

I'll simply state the following:

• Game is due out on PC 12/12/12. 360 and PS3 are rumored.
• They are taking beta test signups. If you wanna be a pal, use my signup link so I get some extra credit. If not, just go to playhawken.com and make the puppies sad. Once you sign up, if you get three other people interested and give them your link to sign up, you'll be able to reserve your nickname.
• The game will be FREE TO PLAY. Microtransactions will cover monetary costs but no money will be needed to play at all.
• The game was made by six people (plus three interns). That's all. You really won't believe it, except for the fact that the whole development team is shown at the end of the third video. Though since then, they've now contracted down to zero interns, and scaled up to seven full-time developers.

And now, of course... those videos.

March 4, 2011: First footage. At this point the game had nine months of development. In-Cockpit tease at the end.


March 30, 2011: First "real" in-cockpit footage. The one that got everyone to go "SHUT THE FUCK UP AND TAKE MY MONEY."


August 30, 2011: First footage of the desert map. Battleship seiges and concussion rockets first turn up here.


March 1, 2012: Most recent footage. Seems to be using the lighter, speedier mech compared to older videos.


The game runs off of the Unreal Development Kit, which is basically a (slightly) stripped down version of Unreal Engine 3. If you can run games from that engine on your PC, you should be able to play Hawken, no problem.

Expect me to be losing at least some of my time around the holidays to this, this year...