Evolve was a good game. The asymmetrical 4 hunters vs 1 monster romp was good fun, provided you had a good team to play with. Shame really that it quickly died out as the player base expected just didn’t come to the game, partially down to Turtle Rock’s DLC program.

However a few days ago the game hit “Stage 2” of it’s ‘evolution’, going free-to-play. The result? A big upsurge in player numbers and seemingly some renewed interest in the game. Going from 157 before the re-launch to 32,000 in a 24-hour peak seems promising for the game.

The re-launch also came with an overhaul to the gameplay, and changes to both the balance and a microtransaction model to fund the game. A further patch is to come as well, as Turtle Rock attempt to maintain the player numbers this time.

Community co-ordinator Cory Lanier wrote in a Reddit thread “We’ve done a lot of gameplay related changes for Stage 2 and that is a big focus for us going forward.” We’ve got a lot of feedback on just general balance stuff that myself and the rest of the balance team are starting to work on for our first update that’ll be hitting next week.

“We’ve got a lot more work to do but it’s great to see so many people coming back and giving things a shot. Hopefully we can keep people around and happy.”