Battle royales are one of the most popular genres around. Starting with H1Z1 making a splash on Steam, followed quickly by PUBG and Fortnite, battle royales have slowly spread to cover the gaming landscape, but their life expectancy in esports has yet to be tested. One of the biggest concerns is in the downtime that plagues most battle royales. There is far too much sitting, searching, and camping. That’s where the Darwin Project comes in, an indie title that has plans for how to get rid of all that.

What Darwin Project has tried to do – and all the videos indicate they have done – is to make battle royales less about hiding and running and more about chasing and hunting. This is where the game truly shines, and where the survival aspects of battle royales become most interesting. Whereas traditional battle royales like PUBG reward players for hiding, Darwin rewards them for hunting.

The first big mechanic is cold weather, an environmental effect that can slowly kill the player. The only way to combat this is to build a fire, but building a fire alerts other players to your presence. This mechanic alone foreshadows interesting strategic possibilities – luring enemies to locations, waiting for the last minute to avoid detection, or trying to do it early when no one is around – but Darwin Project has done a lot more than just that.

In addition to the fire, players can hunt one another with footprints in the snow – another mechanic that opens huge possibilities for hunting and laying traps – but when a player crafts an item, they also leave behind clues enemies can explore. If all of this weren’t enough, there are also buildings scattered across the map that house radar to show where all of the enemies are.

While other games have tried to tackle this take on gaming, namely Evolve, they have all failed pretty miserably. Having just entered Alpha this past weekend, Darwin Project is one of the most promising titles of the year, building on all the things that other battle royales did right and avoiding all the things they did wrong.

The game is coming to Steam soon, where many of us will be eagerly awaiting it.