Arkheron, a game that had an exclusive interview with the PC Gaming Show back in June, will finally be releasing in closed beta next week—per an announcement on the game’s Steam page. In case you’re unfamiliar, Arkheron is an isometric PvPvE battle-royale type squad-based ARPG (try saying that ten times really fast) wherein you climb a tower in the afterlife.
Games are mostly broken up into two segments—a floor, where you and two other mates fight and loot, and showdown arenas that fill me with a deep nostalgia for Battlerite, a lost love I’m yet to find a replacement for (though some have come close). Beat the enemy players, and you’ll get to ascend, rinse and repeat until you reach the tippy top.
The exciting bit is, in part, the blend of extraction-shooter style sound awareness with a camera you can rotate on a swivel, though it wasn’t always that way initially: “As we iterated, that kind of that point and click style didn’t really work as much as we wanted it to,” says Rob Pardo, CEO of Bonfire Studios in an extended version of the PC Gaming Show interview, which you can find below.
“We kind of went through a few different prototypes until our game director, Jeremy, at one point kind of hacked the camera in a particular way and allowed us to swivel it,” says Pardo. Jeremy Craig, the aforementioned game director, continues: “As soon as we unlocked that rotation, it started to play like something different.”
The closed beta will run from July 15 to July 26. As the news post reads: “It’s a focused two-week test where we’re looking to understand how the game holds up with a larger group of players, and whether the changes we’ve made since Next Fest actually land the way we hope.”
Bonfire will first be going through the Steam and FirstLook waitlists, but you can also sign up via the game’s Steam page. If you happen to get invited, you’ll be able to bring your mates along, too: “When you get invited to playtest, you’ll automatically be granted three Steam friend invites.”
Spires, the game’s arena-like game mode, will run for the full two weeks—but the competitive Ascension gamemode will only be available during limited tests on Friday and Sunday. If you’re interested in giving them a go, the announcement post has a full schedule.