Hunt: Showdown is a hidden gem in the first-person shooter genre. It adds depth to an otherwise stagnant formula for fps games. When most fps games are focused on adrenaline-rush and high speed combat, Hunt: Showdown brings you a gritty fps experience where every bullet counts.

On that note, here are some of the gameplay features that make Hunt: Showdown the masterpiece that it is:

1. PvPvE

Battle both players and monsters in Hunt: Showdown

Hunt: Showdown is a first-person PvPvE battle royale game. The objective of Hunt: Showdown is to hunt a boss monster and extract with the boss bounty. The dangers you will face in Hunt: Showdown are the other players going for the same bounty, the monsters found in the wilds, and the boss monster themselves.

The PvPvE feature of Hunt: Showdown turns the game into a high tension fps game where danger lurks at every corner. You’ve got all sorts of danger waiting for you in the Bayou.

While the wild monsters in Hunt: Showdown would normally pose little threat to most hunters, the danger levels abruptly escalate when the wild monsters swarm you or when other players are added to the mix. You will definitely be more focused on fighting other players than facing the wild monsters in the area, but many hunters have fallen to the monsters in these situations. You could also get swarmed by the wild monsters in this game like in a zombie movie where you get chased by dozens of different kinds of monsters only to end up in a dead end and lose your life to the horde.

The PvPvE feature makes Hunt: Showdown a one-of-a-kind game due to the number of situations you can find yourself in when dangers in the form of monsters and players are just waiting to be found.

2. Directional Sound

Hunt: Showdown is best played with headphones or earphones for directional audio

With sound as a core gameplay feature of Hunt: Showdown, the developers put great emphasis on the sound quality and sound delivery system of the game.

In Hunt: Showdown, you can tell the exact direction of a source of sounds. Playing with earphones or headphones delivers the best sound quality of any game I have ever played. You get clear and solid sound with pinpoint direction.

Using this system, you are able to easily locate your enemies by simply listening. Learning and enhancing your use of this gameplay feature gives you the ability to surprise your enemies. You’ll be able to spot them easily from a certain distance or even find them through walls and obstacles.

Be warned that you might be reported as a wallhacker if you’re too good at listening!

3. Boss Monsters

Face your fears against the monstrous bosses of Hunt: Showdown

In Hunt: Showdown, boss battles are a significant feature of the game. Boss battles will require you to team up with other players and employ different strategies to take down these formidable monsters. Because of the unique abilities and nature of each boss, you cannot use the same strategies to defeat them all.

To give emphasis to the uniqueness of the boss monsters, each boss monster highlights a combat feature of Hunt: Showdown. You need to prepare for every possible scenario when you go into a bounty hunt mission because you don’t get to choose which boss you’re hunting.

Additionally, fighting boss monsters, no matter how many hours you’ve poured into the game, is deadly at all times. Unlike the common monsters and zombies found in the wilds in Hunt: Showdown, the boss monsters pack a punch. A single hit from a boss monster will take a significant portion of your health points.

You really have to go guns blazing when you go into the boss monster’s lair. When you’re in there, you will change from a hunter to the hunted.

4. Permanent Death

Death in Hunt: Showdown is a permanent consequence

Hunt: Showdown adds a feature to the game that gives you both a sense of accomplishment and a sense of dread: permanent death.
Permanent death is a feature more often used in role-playing games and strategy games like XCOM and Fire Emblem. This feature is rarely used in first-person shooters, but Hunt: Showdown uses it well.

In Hunt: Showdown, you play as a hunter with the boss monsters as your target. When you successfully complete or survive missions, your hunter extracts from the map with levels gained and maybe even new items. Surviving a match gives you that sense of accomplishment, comfort, and safety that you actually survived.

Why is that? Well, that’s because dying in Hunt: Showdown means that you lose the hunter and everything the hunter had on. This includes the weapons, equipment, and consumables that your hunter brought to the match.

With the nature of Hunt: Showdown, you can lose your hunter at any point, and surviving a hunt feels that much more fulfilling. So you better put on your cowboy hat and your marksman gloves to every match!

5. Dark sight

Find clues and enemies by using your Dark Sight

Dark Sight is an essential feature for your Hunt: Showdown experience meant to direct you towards the goal of every game: the boss bounty or the wellspring. With Dark Sight, you are able to locate the clues, bounty, and wellspring since they are only visible in dark sight. Additionally, when you pick up the bounty, you get a dark sight boost which allows you to see nearby enemies.

In a bounty hunt game, you can also use Dark Sight to check if other hunters are within close vicinity while fighting the boss since it will make the boss icon flash white or red. White means there are no hunters within approx. 50 meters of the boss lair while red means that there are enemy hunters in this vicinity. If the boss was killed and not banished, you can also see that by the lack of whispers when you close in on the lair. In Quickplay the dark sight is used to locate rifts and the Wellspring carrier.

Dark Sight Boost improves your Dark Sight with additional features to help you fight other players. In bounty hunt, Dark Sight Boost highlights your enemies within a radius of 150m in orange as long as the bounty carriers have time left to use it.

The Dark Sight Boost is a fun and essential element to the Hunt: Showdown gameplay because your use of Dark Sight is what brings you to the right place to fight for the bounty or the wellspring.

6. Clues

Find and extract information from the clues found around the map

Clues are like markers that will help you navigate your way through the dark and harsh maps of Hunt: Showdown.Clues are your minor objectives meant to bring you to the main objective of every game. If Dark Sight is your key to unlocking and finding the main objective, clues are the locks blocking your way to the main objectives.

You are able to track clues from a distance with the use of dark sight. When found, you can investigate it to narrow down the location of the boss monster's lair. 

At least one clue is located in each compound on the map, but the exact location within the compound is randomly picked from a set of possible locations. In certain compounds, you can find two clues at the same time.

Clues make the game fun and entertaining by giving you goals and targets to achieve throughout the game. Clues also help funnel all the players to the boss monsters, leading to PvP scenarios. You will most definitely find yourself in a good ‘ol mexican standoff when you follow the clues.

7. Proximity Chat

Coordinate and plan your actions together with your team by using voice chat

Hunt: Showdown is designed with sound as a core feature of the game. The sound you or other players make will make or break the ongoing hunt. One of the major sound designs of hunt is proximity chat. This includes both text and voice chat.

In Hunt: Showdown, all in-game communications are broadcasted to the proximity of the source: you. When you hear the phrase, “everything you say can and will be used against you”, Hunt: Showdown means this literally. The sounds you make can expose you to nearby enemies or friends.

I say enemies or friends because politics exists in Hunt: Showdown. You can strike deals with other players in the mission by simply communicating with them to make verbal or written agreements since you don’t need to be the last man or group standing to win in Hunt: Showdown.

I would say that the proximity chat feature is one groundbreaking feature for Hunt: Showdown that could exponentially heighten the enjoyability of the game. You can make friends or mortal enemies by simply communicating in-game. I have personally rallied multiple groups of players in a single game against a single team which fortified the boss lair after killing the boss monster.

8. Predetermined Extraction Points

A predetermined carriage extraction point in the Bayou

Hunt: Showdown adds another level of complexity to the game in the nature of their predetermined extraction points. You might be wondering why a predetermined extraction point adds complexity to a PvPvE battle royale game like Hunt: Showdown.

Well, the answer is strategy. Predetermined extraction points add another factor for you to consider when hunting a boss monster. When you successfully hunt a boss monster and retrieve the boss bounty, you become visible in every player’s map and dark sight. You are then vulnerable.

The catch now is to be able to extract with the boss bounty. You have to race to the predetermined extraction points while either fighting or avoiding the dangers along the way, including other players. At this point, you need to make sure that you have enough bullets to make it all the way to extraction.

However, don’t forget that predetermined extraction points are also a hotspot for ambushes. If other players can guess which extraction point you’ll be using, you are sure to find an ambush waiting for you on your way to extraction.

When you get to the extraction point, you have to make sure to keep the enemies at bay because you need to stay in the area for a certain period of time before you can successfully extract from the map. When you’re heading for extraction, you best be sure that you’re in for one heck of a ride!

9. Bullet Penetration

Walls may not always protect you from your enemies

The game designers of Hunt: Showdown created the maps and locales of the game with great care and attention to detail. They used different materials ranging from cloth, thin wood, thick wood, thin metal, and thick metal to create the obstacles and infrastructure found in the maps. They also created different bullet types with different levels of bullet speed and bullet penetration.

Putting these two mechanics together, the game designers made bullet penetration a skill for players like us to master. Understanding the different levels of thickness of obstacles and walls and the different levels of bullet penetration a bullet type has to offer is a skill in and of itself. Mastering this skill can turn you into an unstoppable marksman in Hunt: Showdown.

With the right gun and the right location, you can snipe hunter through walls even at a distance! They would never see you coming, literally!

10. Hunter Traits

The hunter trait menu featuring some of the traits available in Hunt: Showdown

The last game defining feature on this list is the hunter traits. Hunter traits are abilities and skills that you choose when your hunter levels up from successfully surviving or completing a bounty.

Hunter traits allow you to personalize every hunter you play as to your personal preferences. You can build a hunter specialized at sneaking around and sniping from a distance or you can build a hunter specialized at running non-stop and able to shoot fast.

No matter what kind of hunter you want to build, the hunter traits available in Hunt: Showdown can make that dream hunter into a reality. However, hunter traits in Hunt: Showdown are far from game breaking. In fact, the hunter traits are designed to keep the game balanced even between a max level hunter and a level 1 hunter.

The hunter traits only improve the hunter little by little and only for very niche and specific purposes without tilting the battle in favor of a high level hunter in combat too much. You can bring out a traitless level 1 hunter and still beat a max level fully improved hunter simply because the game is so balanced.

Nevertheless, the hunter traits make the game fun in that you get to build different hunters for different playstyles, but you have to earn it. Don’t forget that Hunt: Showdown has the permanent death feature!

This ends the list, and I hope that I was able to help you see even the slightest bit of the masterpiece that Hunt: Showdown is. I hope to see you in the Bayou, hunter. Let the hunt begin!

You may also be interested in:

• Is Hunt: Showdown Good
• Hunt: Showdown Co-op Explained
• Hunt Showdown Guide For Beginners [25 Useful Tips Every Beginner Should Know]
• Hunt: Showdown Weapons Guide