"Kill. Loot. Survive."
"For seventy years we've lived in the shadows of The Great War, a war that destroyed earth and forced humanity into the cold void of space. Those three great warring empires have taken our homes, our families, and forced us into a life of raiding. fighting each other over the scraps from their table. Well no more... They thought we would just roll over and die, but we survived. We owe no loyalty to any king or country. what we do now, we do for ourselves. We come from the darkness, we hit hard, we hit fast, we are Marauders!"
— Opening intro narration
Marauders
is a hardcore Looter Shooter developed by Small Impact Games, published by Team17, and released for Early Access since 2022. Set in an alternate unforgiving present several decades after a more destructive Great War rendered planet Earth uninhabitable and forced mankind and the surviving empires to become spacefaring colonials hell-bent on hoarding precious resources and settling old scores once and for all. Meanwhile, unaffiliated pirates and roving bandits roam the reaches of space preying on the weak and feeding off the scraps of the endless fighting between the dominant factions; the Central Empire, the Kingdom Alliance and the United Allies.
You play as the most elite of scavengers dubbed the Marauders and take contracts from various interest groups, including the three major powers in order to survive by getting on their good graces and increasing your options on the black market to get better gear for future raids. Levelling up gains you "Skill Points" which can be used to purchase crafting recipes, ship parts and more. After attaining the max level cap of 50, the game provides the player the option to 'prestige' which resets their stash progress, trader reputation, crafting table and level back to 0, but also gives the player "Prestige Points" which can be used to get better and permanent upgrades to the hideout like extra stash space and additional ship hangers.
The game is currently available in Early Access on Steam. Not to be confused with the Marvel comic series or the 2016 crime thriller Marauders (2016).
Marauders and that nearby damaged Capital Ship contains the following looted tropes:
- 20 Minutes into the Past: The game technically takes place in an alternate 1990s, a little over 70 years since the start of The Great War which saw mankind forced into outer space.
- 2-D Space: Zigzagged. While space combat does allow for 3-D movement and strafing, the controls forces the player's vison to always be 'upright' as if there's a clear direction of gravity despite some arenas taking place in the middle of an asteroid field with no other celestial bodies around.
- Abandoned Area: All of the maps take place in the aftermath of raids in various space installations. Marauders then take advantage of the small window of opportunity to infiltrate then loot, before the life support of the arena fails or the local authorities return with reinforcements to reclaim their property.
- Acceptable Breaks from Reality: Despite the hardcore nature of the game like having little HUD elements, the devs have chosen to simplify some gameplay features:
- Ammo calibres are slightly simplified to avoid too many types of rounds for the unique array of weapons found in the game; as such many guns are rechambered to simply to the nearest approximation of their real-life calibre.
- Magazines can be reloaded and topped off without having to manage separate magazines; in fact you only have to carry the ammunition required for your guns to reload, with any attachments like extended magazines automatically applying to all further reloads.
- A.K.A.-47: While most of the historical armoury retain their accurate names, there are still outliers such as the "VZ-Klobb (Sa vz. 61 Skorpion).
- Alternate History: Somewhere in the last 70 years of constant war, mankind has somehow accelerated their development of spaceflight and continues to wage World War I in the reaches of outer space with technology somewhere in the Cold War period.
- Asteroid Miners: The Iridium Asteroid Mine and the Mining Frigate are explorable locations. Several of the facilities' Miners still roam the overrun maps, either unarmed or carrying pickaxes which they can use to feebly defend themselves with.
- Asteroid Thicket: While it's played straight for all of the raid locations, the asteroids themselves do not actually pose a threat to players as their ships are durable enough to simply crash into rock without taking any damage. The asteroids instead provide cover for player craft to navigate around and avoid gunfire from outside threats.
- Black Market: The Vendors are military logistics quartermasters from the three superpowers and pirates who are all essentially running a side-hustle providing surplus weapons and supplies to Marauders and bandits. Doing daily/main contracts for the vendor's faction levels up your reputation with them giving you access to better kit unique to their faction.
- Boarding Party: The main method for players to enter a location. You may dock your entire main craft into a hanger properly and then be able to return to it later for extraction, or in an emergency situation - utilize an Escape Pod to violently breach an enemy craft.
- Colony Ship: One of the main points-of-interest, belonging to United Allies colonizers. Notably it can be boarded with Breacher Pods in addition to having several serviceable hangers, as it is technically a ship instead of a reinforced space station.
- Diesel Punk: A mix of Weird War and Dystopia. Earth is said to have been completely ruined by The Great War forcing humanity to outer space in hyper-militarized societies still continuing the war over limited resources and old feuds. The sleek, utilitarian architecture of the era's spacecraft and weapons hearkens to mid 20th century technology and design aesthetics.
- Earth That Was: The fate of planet Earth as stated by the opening narration, as a lengthened World War I completely destroyed the planet's ecosystem and forced the population to adopt spacefaring-status for their survival... just to continue fighting a pointless war between empires.
- Escape Pod: The player's entry ship as well as the main maps have Breacher Pods that can be used to breach other players' vessels to attack them on foot or directly extract from the match via Escape Gates. Note that the sub-levels; the Merchant Vessel, Interceptor Frigates and the Damaged Capital Ship can only be breached with escape pods as they do not have functional hangers. As such the only way to escape the crippled vessel is by their own escape pods.
- Every Bullet is a Tracer: Every gun regardless of calibre fires obvious orange-yellowish tracers leaving glowing bullet holes and sparks at impact points.
- Faster-Than-Light Travel: In an aversion to this trope, all of the available craft in the game do not have the ability to FTL travel on their own; instead they all directly rely on Escape Gates, a static superstructure which uses this technology to catapult ships to their destination. These Gates are located at the fringes of the raid area which are then used by players to extract safely from the raid.
- Forever War: Apparently World War I never ended and fighting continues between the last three superpowers to the present day... which is 1992.
- Gas Mask, Longcoat: Some of the cosmetics available gives players this aesthetic in tandem with their default gas masks.
- Gas Mask Mooks: Practically everyone in this setting wears trench warfare-style gas masks, including the player characters. Justified as they are part of the setting's environment suits meant to survive low oxygen environments in spacecraft.
- Grid Inventory: Home base stash space as well as bags/carrying rigs are presented in grid dimensions, some gear allowing for more space for any well-equipped Marauder. There are some items such as storage crates that are Bigger on the Inside giving players a chance to expand their home base inventory space in the long run.
- Hollywood Silencer: Averted. At close range, suppressed weapons are still obviously loud and easy to pinpoint, but they do provide some level of noise dampening at distances, especially if you wish to hide your presence from other players spawning from the other side of the map for just a little while longer. The Welrod silenced pistol and De Lisle Carbine are the exceptions, being really quiet compared to other suppressed guns, which mirrors their real-life counterparts.
- Improvised Lockpick: Averted. While the lockpicks are crafted from scrap, the final result appears to look like professional lockpicking tools. They still break after one use though.
- In Spite of a Nail: Despite the different timeline of civilizational collapse of Earth and the current superpowers that rule outer space, weapons and technology development has hardly changed, even if they regressed slightly from what was available in The '90s.
- NATO firearms, specifically the 5.56x45mm cartridge was created and agreed upon by the Allied powers after World War II, which never occurred. Yet the United Allies weaponsmiths were still able to design and mass-produce the M16A1, albeit in wooden furniture.
- While it appears that the Russian Empire and by extension, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics never survived the exodus from Earth, the Central Empire appears to have preserved their weapon designs, or that most Eastern-European intelligentsia had eventually merged into the Empire. The Krása Rifle is a 1980s Czech-designed carbine crudely based-off the Soviet Kalashnikov design, or at least the carbine "Krinkov" versions of the 7.62x39mm AK. No Kalashnikov rifle has made it into game as of the 2023 builds of the game to prove the weapon design's lineage yet.
- Locked Door: Several locked doors or vaults require keys or Token coins to bypass them for Marauders to access their loot or contract objectives. Most metal grille gates can be opened with the cheap, disposable lockpicks while Depots require the map-specific Tokens to be found on-location to open them. Vaults require an actual Blowtorch to breach the 3 heavy-duty locks present on the vault door.
- Luck-Based Mission: Some contracts require players to explore or eliminate targets unique to the Damaged Capital Ship, Interceptor Frigate and Merchant Ship; all three which only one of them may spawn on a random chance alongside the featured map of the raid. As such, many players resort to quickly escaping their current raid in order to reliably extract with all their gear and then queueing up for another match and repeat until they get one with the correct crippled ship spawned in. Devs have acknowledged this difficulty and is currently reworking missions to less strict conditions and also increasing the probability of those vessels spawning.
- Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me:
- Ballistic shields are available as a main weapon, which blocks all manner of bullets from the front as well as being able to melee-bash close-ranged enemies. The only downsides are that it occupies a main weapon slot and does not hold up to sustained fire. Also unlike other weapons or equipment, it cannot repair any lost durability off-raid limiting their reusability.
- Some firearms have smaller ballistic shields mounted to the front of the weapon giving the shooter some degree of upper torso-head protection, but also severely limits their view due to their bulky size.
- More Dakka: Machine guns like the DP-28. MG-42 and the Bren Mk2 are uncommon, yet devastating weapons due to the close-range combat that players are likely to be involved in. They are offset by their bulky storage sizes and being heavy to lug around all while requiring large quantities of expensive ammunition types like .300 or 54 R mm.
- Multinational Team: Each major power represents several nationalities that allied or were absorbed into their faction after leaving Earth for space.
- The Central Empire are mostly Germans, but have Polish, Romanian and even Hungarian operators. Supplementary material and weapons suggest most of Eastern Europe and possibly whatever remains of Tsarist Russia have merged into the Empire as well.
- The United Allies are seemingly only American, but may have French auxiliaries on their side as well. note
- The Kingdom Alliance represents the remnants of The British Empire and their colonies, one notably being Australia.
- Nuke 'em: One of the available ship-mounted weapons that players can bring with their ship is a one-time-use-only nuclear warhead that can utterly devastate a large radius during space combat.
- Prison Ship: Penal Colony Beta 5, which is now experiencing the aftermath of a violent prison riot that resulted the the deaths of the prison guards. Armed and dangerous criminals now lurk the hallways armed with various weapons ranging from knives, truncheons and even guns looted from the arms lockers. As of the Excavation Update, the prison's Warden and his surviving guards can be released from their panic rooms, but are hostile to everyone else.
- Privateer: The different factions hiring Marauders to do their dirty work for them is not too dissimilar to the older practice of early 16th-18th century empires issuing of letters of marque to what amounts to 'legalized' international piracy while keeping in line with The Laws and Customs of War.
- Red-plica Baron: One of the boss characters is a Central Empire Ace Pilot who actually does go by the moniker, "Red Baron". True to the history of his namesake, he flies a red-painted strike frigate and is more than capable of wiping out scores of ships and even Breacher Pods in space combat. Even if one was lucky enough to board his craft, the Baron is just as much of a crack shot on his feet as he is behind the flightstick.
- Reset Milestones: When a Marauder reaches level 50, they can choose to Prestige, which entails a complete wipe of the player's inventory stash, trader reputation, their main questline progression and of course, their level back to literal zero. In return, they can receive one Prestige point per wipe which can buy them permanent upgrades like extra stash space and special outfits that carries on to the next prestige.
- Robbing the Dead: Given the survivalist mindset of the Marauders, this is pretty much the standard procedure if you want to get good loot, as even static environment corpses often have valuables on them.
- Sawed-Off Shotgun: A common sidearm used by all factions. Their wide adoption somewhat makes sense, given the close-quarters nature of spaceship interiors. Aside from shotguns, the Mosin "Obrez" rifle and PPSh-41 SMG have also been shortened to unreasonably compact sizes.
- Scavenger World: At least for the Marauders and various pirate factions as they do not have the resources or logistics to sustain themselves. Despite their superpower status, bits of lore and conversations between the traders suggest that even the big three empires have constant supply problems behind the scenes and thus require assistance from the players in the form of contracts.
- Schizo Tech: Taking place in an alternate present, the range of technology is wide and varied with the Diesel Punk elements handwaving the space travel aspect of this universe.
- Smaller spacecraft still run on cost-exorbitant fossil-fuel engines, while bigger capital ships or frigates are said to run on nuclear reactors.
- Firearms, both small arms and ship-mounted cannons are still kinetic, chemical-propellant in nature. The technology however is still stuck in the 20th century; starting from pre-World War I pistols, to WWII naval cannons and up to the Cold War-era assault rifles.
- Computing tech has somehow managed to catch up to the 90s, with the appearance of boxy CRT-style monitors flanked by bulky PC box units. Notably, libraries, filing cabinets and more analog forms of data storage spaces still exist in common areas.
- Selective Historical Armoury: While the list of weapons include picks from classic WWI and WWII inventories (e.g. M1928 Thompson, StG-44, DP-28, MP40, etc), some Cold War weaponry like wooden-furniture M16A1s, Israeli Uzis, Korean Daewoo K1 carbines and other foreign exotic prototype weapons make up a good portion of mid to late-game armouries.
- Sentry Gun: Some maps have hostile auto-turrets placed around the arena in outer space forcing players to destroy them before they can shoot their own craft down. The Prison Colony and UA Colony Ship has four auto-turrets each that threatens anyone attempting to board or escape while the stricken Capital Ship has two defending its flanks.
- Sleeper Starship: The U.A Colony Ship has several bays of cryo-tubes presumably for the colonizers. Judging by the amount of missing tubes, the overcrowded morgue/med bay and platoons of active, trigger-happy Marines wandering about; it all paints a very grim picture on the current state of their mission.
- Space Battle: The first phase of a raid can begin with this, as all players spawn in their crafts scattered at the edges of the playable asteroid field where they can begin to make their way to the main attraction. Along the way they can engage in battle with one another using the various mounted weaponry on their ships to either take out the competition quickly or attempt to board other ships to steal them.
- Space Is Noisy: Downplayed. Outer space sections of the game is very muffled, but loud enough for players to hear flak rounds going off in the distance and especially if fired in your general direction. While inside a ship or the designated arena, nothing occurring outside in space can be heard by the occupants, except for Breacher Pods making impact on the hull.
- Space Marine: The Three superpowers employ elite naval troops, which can be encountered by Marauders depending on the map. U.A Marines patrol their Colony Ship. Kingdom Alliance has their S.A.S troopers (descended from the real-world UK Special Air Service) occupying the Navy Outpost. The Central Empire has Navy Commandos who can be found as the remaining skeleton crew of Damaged Capital Ships awaiting repair craft and reinforcements. Commandos can also randomly appear in small fireteams on other maps. These elite troops are often well-armed and heavily armoured presenting a real challenge to players planning to fight them in their element.
- Space Pirates: The players a.k.a the Marauders are technically this, along with an actual Pirates faction and other various unaffiliated bandit groups.
- Space Station: All of the main raid arenas are essentially this; either standalone superstructures like the Penal Colony or Navy Outpost or are built into large asteroids like the Iridium Asteroid Mine or the Terraformer.
- Spider Tank: The Navy Outpost map has motor pools storing what appears to be (unusable, gameplay-wise) Central Empire tanks, with German Panzer-style turrets mounted to a multi-leg chassis instead of conventional tracks, which are now assumed to be the standard for armoured warfare in this alternate present.
