New shooter The Cycle now relies more on PvE and Loot

The Cycle: Frontier is a shooter from the Berlin studio YAGER and was released a year ago in Early Access in the Epic Games Store. The developers have now heavily revised the shooter and now the closed beta has also appeared on Steam.

What exactly is The Cycle? This is a Free2Play shooter from the German developer YAGER. Originally the focus was on battle royale gameplay with some PvE elements.

But since the shooter entered the early access phase last year, the game has changed a lot. The developers have gradually turned the game inside out from a battle royale to a survival shooter.

• The game offers co-op, PvE and PvP
• The focus is now on survival and collecting loot
• This includes equipment, but also resources such as ores
• You spawn at the beginning of a so-called “drop” on an extensive map
• Similar to games like Hunt: Showdown, if you should die, you can lose equipment
• You will only keep loot and equipment if you successfully make it to the rescue ship after your search for loot
• There is also a social hub with factions from which you can receive missions
• Through these factions you can unlock tools, upgrades and weapons
• You can go hunting for loot either alone or with up to two friends
• In principle, you can be on a map for as long as you want. Loot even respawns when you are far enough away.
• However, the servers are restarted every 6 hours.

Who exactly is behind The Cycle? The shooter is being developed by the German developer studio Yager from Berlin. Yager was founded in 1999 by 5 developers. The studio is known, for example, for the shooter hit Spec-Ops: The Line and has been working on The Cycle for some time.

Most recently, the news made the big round that the Chinese company Tencent has bought the majority stake in the developer studio.

The Cycle now relies on survival instead of battle royale

What are the differences from before? In the original vision of The Cycle, the battle royale aspect was much more in focus. Instead of fighting for resources and loot and then flying out, lobbies with up to 20 players competed for crystals.

Back then there was a storm that kept spreading. The storm wasn’t a deadly gas like in Warzone, for example, which made the playing field smaller and smaller, but it made the PvE creatures much more dangerous and also caused damage.

Is the storm still there? These storms are also available in the new version of The Cycle, but you don’t die directly. If such a storm breaks out, you should seek shelter, but there is also special loot during the storm phase.

The course of a round then always follows a roughly similar structure:

• You should do jobs to get points
• Kill NPC opponents or open chests to get coal
• buy new weapons that can be picked up at any time via a shop
• Kill opponents if they stand in the way
• reach the rescue ship at the end of the match and escape with it

This concept has not completely disappeared, but the survival aspect is now much more important and it is no longer about crystals (points), but about loot and equipment.

What it looks like now after the revision remains to be seen. The Cycle starts closed beta on Steam and in the Epic Store. When does the closed beta start? It has been running since September 30, 2021.

How to participate: You can apply for access via Steam and Epic. If there are still places available, you will receive access by email.

What’s in the closed beta? In the beta, the maps “Bright Sands” and “Crescent Falls” are available. They have been completely redesigned to reflect the new direction of the game.

There will also be a new type of opponent, which is apparently supposed to make the search for loot a lot more difficult for players. There should be a lot more of them than before. The closed beta is subject to an NDA and players are not allowed to stream gameplay or post recordings.

When is the full release? A release is currently planned for 2022. Will The Cycle also appear on other platforms? It is still unclear. The developers want to concentrate on the PC version for the time being.