New hardcore FPS built to overthrow Escape from Tarkov just hit early access

In case you’ve missed all the hype, a new mil-sim tactical extraction shooter has arrived for PC players—and its early access launch couldn’t have been timed better.

Gray Zone Warfare, the newest title from Czech studio MADFINGER Games, began its early access period on April 29 and is now open to the public. The game sees players drop into Lamang Island, a fictional location in Southeast Asia, where they’ll quickly be contracted into a private company and sent to go head-to-head against other players and bots to complete missions and extract new gear back to their home base.

From immersive gameplay to its catalog of 150 missions and plenty of story and lore along the way, there’s a heap of content to get your hands on from day one. Those who have played the likes of Hunt: Showdown or Call of Duty‘s DMZ will feel right at home in GZW, as well as those who frequent the battlefields in Escape from Tarkov. Much has been said about MADFINGER’s decision to launch GZW this week, with many believing the devs are capitalizing on Tarkov‘s capitulation following the highly-panned launch of a new “pay-to-win” edition for the game, which fans have labeled “disgusting.”

Other players believe GZW feels a little undercooked despite its status as an early access game due to the launch coinciding with the outcry around Tarkov. Many have encountered server troubles, latency issues, and very buggy gameplay—but the MADFINGER team has already been hard at work with numerous hotfixes and a public test server.

Gameplay issues haven’t stopped fans with over 65,000 players dropping into GZW on April 29 and 30, according to stats site SteamDB. The base version of GZW is available from the Steam store for $34.99 USD, with several other DLC add-ons also available—something that hadn’t gone unnoticed, with some early-adopting players still struggling to work out which special edition actually included the base game.

If you don’t mind the occasional glitch and your PC is up to scratch, GZW is out now, with plenty of updates expected down the track from the MADFINGER crew.