Tribes soars out of the grave once again with Tribes 3: Rivals entering early access next week

rockpapershotgun.com:

The fast-paced flag-capturing FPS series Tribes will return from the dead once again next week with the early access launch of Tribes 3: Rivals. Over the weekend, developers Prophecy Games announced March 12th is the date, with the full launch to follow after up to a year. Prophecy are spun off from Hi-Rez Studios, the folks who who made Tribes: Ascend, which officially shut down a few years back. I hear this next one's pretty fun.

The core of Tribes is capture-the-flag on giant maps, which players whizz about using jetpacks and a movement trick known as 'skiing'. Combine this with some projectile weaponry where you need to lead your shots and you have lots of opportunities for satisfying high-skill plays. Resident RPS Tribesman James enjoyed a Tribes 3 alpha playtest last year, with some reservations, then came away more enthusiastic after seeing changes made for its Steam Next Fest demo in February.

Tribes 3: Rivals is due to enter early access on Steam on the 12th of March, 2024. While Ascend was free-to-play, Rivals will cost cash (and sell cosmetics too), with a launch discount set to temporarily bring the price down from $20 to $18. The plan is for the early access phase to last between six months and one year while Prophecy Games add, tweak, and optimise bits.

The devs say it may come to the Epic Games Store later (which I imagine could have been requested by as many as three people). They say it might also hit PlayStations and Xboxen at some point, potentially supporting cross-platform play.

Tribes 3 developers Prophecy Games started as part of Hi-Rez Studios, and have said they include "a lot of the core team" from Ascend, then "spun off from Hi-Rez as a fully independent studio" in early 2020. Prophecy previously released the battle royale-ish Starsiege: Raiders and extraction shooter Starsiege: Deadzone, both set in the world of Tribes. Raiders never made it past the playtesting phase while Deadzone did get an early access launch in July 2023. In February