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Petter Mannerfelt is currently the Creative Director on Sharkmob’s high-stakes PvPvE shooter Exoborne, but not long ago he was a Game Director at Ubisoft Massive, working on The Division and its Dark Zone mode.

Before Escape from Tarkov coined the term "evacuation shooter," players were backstabbing each other over high-tier loot in The Division's Dark Zones, a quarantined, high-stakes arena embedded in the RPG's New York map. The concept is now one of the most hyped trends since battle royale.

Battle royale was actually where Sharkmob started. The studio’s first game, Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodhunt, was a casual, high-mobility battle royale game that, despite good quality, couldn’t sustain an audience. Petter attributes part of the game’s woes to being late to the party, as other studios were already looking for the next trend after Fortnite, Apex Legends, and Warzone gobbled up all the attention.

With Exoborne, Petter says the studio has matured and is in a better position because the evacuation shooter is still a relatively young and malleable concept. While Escape from Tarkov provided a welcome and extremely tense template for the genre, Exoborne takes a slightly softer, more mass-market approach.

Petter explained some of the things that Exoborne does differently to keep players engaged and entertained, starting with how the world is introduced to players through narrative. After the upfront introduction and tutorial, Exoborne will slowly drip-feed the world, cutscenes, and optional story missions.

He likens it to Supergiant's Hades and how it makes action roguelikes more accessible through a narrative that slowly expands over dozens of runs. Players will have their own personal story progression in Exoborne, but this will run in parallel with regular PvPvE combat. Each map will also have hidden world information, audio logs, hidden cameras, and more, similar to how The Division spreads story content through its dilapidated city streets.

Exoborne's story will continue to evolve after the game's release. During my visit to Sharkmob in Malmö, Sweden, I got to see their motion capture and photogrammetry studio - an impressive camera complex that allows the studio to scan real actors (as well as items made by their in-house prop master) and have them perform cutscenes in real time, including handheld camera rigs and facial capture. If all goes according to plan, the studio is confident it will be able to quickly produce cutscenes and other narrative content based on audience demand to meet the demands of the competitive online service space.

But that’s for another day. What’s more important is not to scare off players who might have watched a few Tarkov streams and decided that evacuation shooters are too intense to play. Sharkmob wants to attract players who are only familiar with the hardcore aspects of the genre.

Exoborne matches tend to be short and fun, with players being dropped onto a map and given the option to complete a variety of optional PvE objectives, and then choosing to evacuate via a marked evacuation zone once they've amassed enough loot. Players can accumulate money and crafting resources to purchase basic gear, and there will be no server resets. To further reduce frustration, some sort of skill- or progress-based matchmaking system is also planned, but the exact form of this has yet to be announced.

Exoborne doesn't have a release date yet, but beta sign-ups will be open during Gamescom this month. The full game will be a premium edition, and Petter made it clear that while there will be the usual assortment of online service cosmetics available, Exoborne isn't a pay-to-win game. The only way to get better gear is to go out and find it... or kill someone else and take their gear.