Hunt: Showdown 1896 drops you into the Louisiana Bayou in 1896 with a rifle, a target, and a map full of people who want the same thing you do. Crytek Frankfurt built a first-person shooter that is also a simulator, a horror game, and a survival test, and it asks you to play it solo, in a pair, or in a team of three. There are no heroes here. That is the pitch, and it is also the problem.
Trailer, via IGDBcom.
The Bayou and the Bounty
The setup is simple enough to explain in one breath. You are a Hunter. Nightmarish monsters have infested the bayou, and your job is to track one down, kill it, and banish it. Clues lead you to the target. Other Hunters are hunting the same reward, and they will reach it first if you are slow.
Once you have the bounty in hand, the rules change. Every other Hunter on the map now knows where you are and what you are carrying. The game calls this the showdown, and it is the moment the whole design is built around. You can fight, you can run, or you can die holding the prize.
Kill and banish your target, collect the bounty, and then get ready for the showdown; once the bounty is in your hands every other Hunter on the map will be after your prize.
Period Weapons and a Bloodline to Feed
Hunt: Showdown 1896 arms you with brutal, period-inspired weapons rather than modern hardware. The pacing follows from that choice. Reloads take time. A missed shot is not a minor inconvenience.
Progression runs through the Bloodline. You level up, unlock gear, and collect experience and gold as you play. That structure gives the multiplayer loop a long tail, though it also means new players spend their first hours outmatched by Hunters who have already fed their Bloodline.
The game supports single player, multiplayer, and co-operative modes across Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and PC. The first-person perspective keeps you close to the mud and the muzzle flash. Genre labels stack up — shooter, simulator, action, horror, survival — and the game earns most of them.
A 7.5 That Fits
The IGDB critic aggregate sits at 7.5/10 across five outlets, and that number lands where it should. Hunt: Showdown 1896 is not a game with a hidden ceiling. It is a game with a real one, and the ceiling is the same thing that makes it work.
The PvPvE structure is the smart part. Monsters give every match a shared objective, and other Hunters give that objective a cost. The bayou is a dark, ruthless world, and the game does not soften it. Playing in a team of two or three is where the tension pays off, because the bounty turns your partners into the only people you can trust and the people most likely to get you killed.
The friction is real too. The period weapons and the slow reloads punish anyone who expects a modern shooter’s rhythm. The Bloodline grind puts a wall in front of new players. And the horror, the survival, and the simulator tags all pull in slightly different directions, which means Hunt: Showdown 1896 rarely commits fully to any one of them.
What the Score Means
7.5/10 is not a dismissal. It is a measurement. Hunt: Showdown 1896 does one thing better than almost anything else in its genre — it makes the reward the danger — and it does several smaller things well enough to keep you in the bayou. The bounty is the whole game, and the game knows it.
Key facts
– Release year: 2019
– Developer and publisher: Crytek (Crytek Frankfurt)
– Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, PC
– Modes: Single player, multiplayer, co-operative
– Critical score: 7.5/10 (IGDB aggregate, 5 outlets)
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