Conan Exiles has been available in early access on PC for a while, but it's finally hitting Xbox One on August 16, bringing some ice cold environs for good measure.
Conan Exiles is a survival game from Funcom, set in the Conan the Barbarian universe. Players can band together on dedicated servers, crafting huge fortresses, all sorts of gear and weapons, while carefully managing their character's needs, like hunger and thirst.
I previewed Conan Exiles on PC a while ago, and though I found it to be a little thin on content, I saw the foundations for a tremendous survival game that, even in its early Alpha state, seemed to have more polish than some of its closest genre rivals.
Conan Exiles is now ready for its console debut on August 16, as a timed exclusive on Xbox One. To sweeten the deal, Funcom is adding a whopping 70 percent of additional playable terrain, set in a freezing Hyborian mountain range.
In the free expansion, dubbed "The Frozen North," Conan Exiles players will discover all-new monsters, materials, and hazards in a land that Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim fans will find familiar.
You will battle Viking-like Nordheimers, who are as violent as they are drunk, battle giant mammoths, and build insulated fortresses to stave off the cold.
The Frozen North introduces various new mechanics, such as bee keeping to create honey, and thus alcohol, and also fishing traps for creating sustainable sources of food. It also adds a new temperature mechanic that will force players to dress appropriately for the types of weather and climate they encounter across Conan Exiles' sizable world.
Conan Exiles' creative director, Joel Bylos, hailed the efforts of Funcom and the avalanche of improvements the team has made to the game since it was first launched into Alpha testing in early 2017.
This expansion update does not just mean more content and more features, the team has also worked extremely hard to make sure this release brings with it significant improvements to core aspects of the game such as combat, artificial intelligence, and more.
These improvements, in addition to the twenty-eight updates we have already introduced to the game over its six months in PC Early Access, mean this version of Conan Exiles is bigger, and even more importantly, better than ever before.
Since I tried out Conan Exiles in early 2017, Funcom has issued dozens of updates, polishing gameplay and adding new mechanics. Some of these additions include siege weapons, dungeons, a dye system, new equipment, new cosmetic decorations, avatar defenses, new building materials, and more. It's quite plain that Funcom is in it for the long haul, as it approaches the first quarter 2018 full launch date.
Between The Long Dark, Ark Survival Evolved, and Fortnite, the summer of 2017 has been quite a ride for survival game fans. Exiles has already sold half a million copies on PC (priced at $24.99) and will make a great addition to the Xbox Game Preview program on August 16. Still no word on whether or not the infamous endowment slider has survived censorship on Xbox, though ...
Are you going to jump into the world of Hyboria? Let us know in the comments.