We were recently invited to watch a presentation of Arkheron, the debut project of Irvine-based developer Bonfire Studios, ahead of its public unveiling, and it’s safe to say the game looks very unique. Sure, it explicitly takes elements from other genres, but the final product appears quite unlike anything we’ve seen.
First things first. Bonfire Studios was founded nearly ten years ago by Rob Pardo, who worked at Blizzard Entertainment as a Designer and later Chief Creative Officer on games like Starcraft, Warcraft III, World of Warcraft, Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, Hearthstone, and the ill-fated Project Titan (which was eventually repurposed into Overwatch). Pardo brought several former Blizzard veterans along to establish a core team that has now grown to around 70 employees, though Bonfire is still hiring in a few areas like Art, Engineering, and Publishing.
Arkheron has been worked on and iterated on for a long time with the help of a peculiar routine: the development team would play it literally every morning, collect feedback right after every session, and deliver some improvements by the afternoon. Bonfire even started private playtesting with a very small community last year to get more feedback. Now, they are ready to open the first public playtest, which will take place on Steam between Friday, September 19 and Sunday, September 21.
What is the game all about, then? Well, as mentioned in the headline, the elevator pitch is that it combines elements from Diablo, Dark Souls, and PUBG. Its ultimate goal is to create a thrilling team-based PvPvE gameplay experience that constantly keeps players on their toes. It is played from a top-down view like Diablo, but with the significant innovation of a shooter-like free-aim camera system that can be independently controlled and swung around the player’s character, allowing for precise aiming, tracking, and split-second decision-making during the game’s tense fights. This particular setup also ensures melee and ranged combatants are on equal footing, as the camera is close enough to make close-quarters engagements feel intense and personal without losing sight of ranged targets.
The PUBG part is factored into the main game mode, the so-called Ascension Royale. In Arkheron, fifteen teams of three players each (for a total of 45 players) fight to the death to ascend to the top level of a mysterious tower that, according to the game’s lore, is made up of memories from the living world. The tower is effectively a reflection of those who reside in it and, just like any memory, it can change and shift over time. Player characters are indeed Echoes, souls who have died with unfinished business. They are anchored to the tower by the grip of a past they can’t quite remember and driven to do whatever it takes to escape this surreal Abyss.
In each match, Echoes start with bare fists and have to equip themselves by looting items from sources like treasure chests, monster drops, quests, and of course, executed player opponents. After gearing up for a few minutes, the Abyssal Storm begins to sweep across the entire tower level, leaving the beacons that appear on the map as the only safe zones. But there are always fewer beacons than there are remaining teams, making this a bit of a musical chairs type of game, for a team must always secure its own safe beacon to stay in the match. Needless to say, if another team contests your beacon, you will have to eliminate them to ascend to the next level, all the way toward victory, with the final showdown taking place on the tower’s fourth floor.
Pardo explained that in Arkheron, items are the heroes. Each item carries a unique ability, such as a sword with a stun skill, a crossbow that can be charged to snipe foes from afar, a crown that can temporarily turn your entire team invisible, or a staff that can raise a wall blocking enemies outside for a few seconds. Since the items are dropped randomly and the characters themselves do not have any abilities, the game forces players to adapt in each match rather than sticking with their favorite build as they would in similar titles.
Each Echo has access to four item slots: two weapons, a crown, and an amulet. Most of the items that can be found in the game are called Eternal Relics and come in sets of four. Collecting two items in a set provides a set bonus, so players could gather up to two set bonuses at a time. Alternatively, when someone is lucky enough to collect all four items in the same set, they can either stay in Echo form and enjoy the 4-piece set bonus or transform into a so-called Eternal. These are the tower’s inhabitants with the most lasting ties to the living world through memories they just cannot let go of. Bonfire plans to unfold the narrative of Arkheron over time through the perspective of the Eternals.
From a gameplay standpoint, transforming into an Eternal will grant you a fifth ability, but the flipside is that you won’t be able to return to Echo form for the remainder of that match. During the press presentation, Pardo teased that the studio could rotate Eternals in and out of the active roster to shift the meta. By the way, Eternal Relics can also be upgraded up to Rank 3 by finding their duplicates (this includes items found by teammates).
Matches in Arkheron last up to 25 minutes (if you make it to the tower’s top level). Before starting, teams look at the map to choose their drop zone in yet another nod to PUBG and the Battle Royale genre. The map will also show beacons once they become active and outline which ones are already contested. Due to how the game mode is structured, unlike in regular Battle Royale games, there really is no way to avoid fighting and earning the win. It’s even possible that the game finishes earlier than the fourth floor if all the remaining teams go to the same beacon; obviously, the last team standing gets the victory.
Besides regular monsters, the game also features a roaming, unkillable enemy called Fury that can show up and completely disrupt fights between player teams. The presentation showed how one player, with the other two downed (they respawn after a successful ascension to a higher floor), skillfully took advantage of Fury’s appearance to defeat a full team of three.
Toward the end of the presentation, Rob Pardo noted that Bonfire decided to build game depth and mastery before focusing on approachability. Their reasoning was that a game designed from day one for depth can sustain thousands of hours of play for competitive audiences, and approachability can be layered on later. As such, despite the PvE elements, it’s fair to say Arkheron will primarily be a competitive PvP experience. While the play test that kicks off today is only available on PC, the full game will eventually be released on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S|X, too. Moreover, according to Bonfire, both mouse and keyboard and game controllers are fully supported and on equal footing.