Square Enix's foray into the looter-shooter genre is available for free on Steam this week, giving players a chance to play the full version of Outriders. While Outriders has always had a free demo available, this free play event allows players to progress as far as they are able over the course of the limited time period.
Outriders was released in April 2021, created by Polish developer People Can Fly and published by Square Enix. People Can Fly is known best for games like Painkiller and Bulletstorm, along with collaborations with Epic Games on Fortnite and the Gears of War series. As a looter-shooter in the same vein as Destiny and Borderlands, Outriders has players choosing one of four classes with a variety of abilities and skill trees, using acquired loot and crafting to augment their playstyle and tackle increasingly difficult content. The game received average reviews, with players enjoying the gunplay and loot despite the presence of bugs and some poor design choices.
From June 20 to June 23, Outriders will be free to play on Steam in its entirety. Players have reportedly completed the campaign in around 12 hours, although it will likely take closer to 30 hours if players take their time to explore and complete side content such as side quests, bounties, and hunts. That being said, a three-day window to play the game without limits should be plenty of time for players to experience much of its content beyond the free demo. The Outriders demo can be played for an unlimited time, but the content is limited to the prologue and first chapter, taking around three hours to reach the level 7 cap.
This free play period is helping promote Outriders' upcoming Worldslayer DLC. Worldslayer will be the first expansion for Outriders, bringing a standalone campaign along with new enemies and environments to explore. Worldslayer will introduce new Legendary Armor sets, some of which will be equipable by all four classes. Also coming with Worldslayer is a new PAX tree system, a separate skill tree for each class. This tree will use PAX points to activate nodes from two different branches, which gives players opportunities for coming up with hybrid builds or further specializing their character.
With the major New Horizon update making tons of community-requested features and the game's first campaign DLC coming up, Outriders is experiencing somewhat of a revival after its troublesome launch. Hopefully, the free-to-play period will bolster the game's numbers ahead of the Worldslayer DLC release and inspire People Can Fly to continue improving the game according to player feedback.
Outriders is available for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. The Worldslayer expansion releases June 30.