Maneater Final Developer Diary Shows Off Brutal Shark Gameplay

Maneater, the new brain child of Tripwire Interactive, is about a month away from launch. The team has released the last development diary, in which we find out some interesting facts about the game’s development. However, much more importantly, we get to see a ton of gameplay footage, including combat with other underwater predators, a lot of shark upgrades and customization, and many, many people getting mauled messily.

The main idea of Maneater is that it’s basically a kind of shark action RPG. While certainly pretty funny (like the game being presented as a Duck Dynasty reality show), it’s not another Goat Simulator. Instead, the developers seem to have gone for a relatively serious approach when it comes to gameplay. As a young, fresh-faced and bushy-tailed shark, you’ll have to carefully navigate your way through bigger sharks, crocodiles, shark hunters to grow and become stronger. Then, turn around and just demolish everything and everyone that gave you grief.

And, as you can see if you check out the dev diary below, you’ll see that the game offers a ton of wild upgrades for your shark, which are, as I understand it, one of the main pillars of Maneater. You can encase yourself in rocks, make a shark that can emit electricity, and god knows what else. It seems like it could be a ton of fun, as long as the gameplay loop remains fresh. We’ll see what it’s like when it comes out. As it stands, though, I’m honestly on board.

Maneater is coming out on May 22nd on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC via the Epic Game Store. There will also be a Switch version later in the year. Also, it has a Steam entry, but you can only wishlist it for now. At the time of writing, you can pre-order it on Epic Games and the Xbox store and get the exclusive Tiger Shark preorder bonus. It increases your ability to gain nutrients from your prey and digest almost anything. Quite the leg up.