Sega’s new space-pirate shooter Hyenas is getting the sass to Mars

Hyenas is a sci-fi, team-based shooter that is not at all what I was expecting next from the developers who make the Total War series. Set in that most dodgy of times, the future, Hyenas is about pilfering relics of pop culture such as Pez dispensers, Mega Drives and Sonic The Hedgehog paraphernalia before tech billionaires who’ve colonised Mars can furnish their homes with it all. You can be bemused at your own leisure by watching the trailer below.

Your ragtag team of low-gravity robbing hoods resides in the Taint, a charming name for the fragmented remains of what was once Earth, destroyed by the zero-gee engines of billionaires’ spacecraft. Teams of three hyenas compete against other crews to raid “spaceship shopping malls” called Plunderships – not starshops, bizarrely – that somehow contain a load of tacky merch from the late 20th and early 21st centuries. I appreciate the idea that today’s increasingly banal culture is mostly derived from the gobbled-up and regurgitated wreckage of decades past, so ten house points go to the devs for that.

Developers Creative Assembly are calling Hyenas a “ballsy entry into the most competitive genre in gaming” and, well, yeah. It’s definitely trying to be. Seems like an unusual decision for a company that made their name from decades worth of decent strategy games, and a pants-ploppingly good Alien tie-in, to enter such a crowded space. Can’t help but feel that publishers Sega are justifiably looking for some of that lucrative action, and their extremely quick footprints are quite evident in the trailer.

Hyenas is targeting a launch window in 2023, no further info than that right now. You’ll be able to nab it on Steam and the Epic Games Store. If you like the cut of Hyenas jib then you should be able to sign up for the closed alpha test, which has already begun, here.