Everyone's talking about Crucible right now, but how can you start to play it? Here's a step-by-step guide to becoming a Hunter.
Crucible is the big release of the week, a head-to-head-to-environment PVP hero shooter from Amazon and Relentless Studios. It’s free to play and available now. Here’s what you need to know before you hit the download button.
How to Play Amazon’s Free Game Crucible
At time of writing, Crucible is only available for Windows. The “download” link on PlayCrucible.com takes you directly to the game’s storefront on Steam. There was a brief period of time in which you could get Crucible directly from Amazon, but the download link got yanked at some point over the course of what’s apparently been an interesting couple of days for the Crucible team. You can still buy Crucible’s DLC Founder’s Packages directly from Amazon, in case you’ve got some gift cards to burn, but the game client itself is exclusive to Steam for the moment.
Each of Crucible’s three starting game modes are team-based PVP matches, so naturally, you’ll require an Internet connection in order to play Crucible. Relentless Studios’s recommended specs are:
- GPU: GTX 1060 or Radeon RX 570
- CPU: Intel i5-6500 (3.2 Ghz) or AMD Ryzen 3 2200G
- Memory: 8 GB
- Hard Disk: SSD, 15 GB of available space
- OS: Windows 10
You can get by with less, however. Relentless’s official minimum specs for Crucible are:
- GPU: GTX 660 or ATI Radeon HD 7850
- CPU: Intel i5-3570 or AMD FX-6300
- Memory: 8 GB
- Hard Disk: 7200 RPM HDD, 15 GB of available space
- OS: Windows 7 64-bit with DirectX 11
Between this and Valorant, it’s nice to see the start of a new wave of head-to-head shooters that can be played on lower-end machines. Even if you’re a few years out from your last upgrade, you can probably get some decent performance out of Crucible. (I was about to get optimistic about how maybe we’re past the stage where every new PC game tries to push the hardware to breaking point, but then I remembered there’s a Crysis remaster coming soon and my CPU preemptively exploded.)
Related: Is Crucible Coming to Xbox One and PlayStation 4?
Crucible is a “freemium” game, with an in-game shop that offers an extensive array of cosmetic options. You can buy decals, character skins (most of which are just recolors at this stage), and emotes in exchange for credits, and anyone who logs into Crucible before June 1st gets a free 1,000 credits to spend at the store. Currently available DLC for Crucible includes three Founder’s Packs for $14.99, $24.99, and $49.99, which offer exclusive skins for the playable character Captain Mendoza, increasingly vast sums of credits for the cosmetic store, and a Pre-Season Battle Pass that opens up an 80-tier reward system. You can complete challenges in-game to gradually unlock rewards like experience boosts, credits, voice lines, and new skins from the Battle Pass, and the more expensive DLC packages offer “battle stars” that instantly unlock up to 20 tiers of the Battle Pass’s rewards.
For a more in-depth look at the cosmetics shop in Crucible, check out our video:
Check out our Crucible game hub for more news, tips, and guides on the game, including:
- Here’s an at-a-glance look at all 10 starting Hunters’ special abilities
- Can you play Crucible with your controller? Yes and no
- Here are the voice actors behind each of Crucible’s Hunters
Crucible is still very early in development, and like any major online game in its launch week, it’s difficult to successfully connect to the game right now. Stay patient, wait for your chance, and let us know when you get in via our official Twitter, @PrimaGames.
Keyword: How to Play Amazon's Free Game Crucible