I’ve never played a hero shooter or character-driven multiplayer online battle arena game in which you don’t get to pick the hero you control from the jump. But that’s pretty much exactly the conceit of Arkheron–this player-versus-player, strategy-driven action game doesn’t let you just pick your hero from a roster. No, instead you have to earn the right to play as your favorite character (or just be extraordinarily lucky), all while fending off the desperate attacks of enemy players and racing to the top of a tower being overtaken by darkness. It’s tense. It’s challenging. It’s a game I really want to keep playing.
In Arkheron, you fight in a squad of three within a dark fantasy world of swords, axes, bows, whips, hammers, and magical spell-producing artifacts. As the first round of a new match begins, your team picks where they want to spawn on the first floor of a tower. The corridors and dungeons of this first floor are full of loot-filled chests that contain weapons and expendable items, computer-controlled enemies that can ruin your team’s day, locked doors that hide secret pathways and vaults of legendary equipment, hidden portals that can transport you to other locations on that particular floor, and, of course, the other teams. As the round reaches its end, a dangerous darkness begins to encroach on all the players, funneling everyone to flee for one of the handful of glowing beacons that randomly spawn on the map.
Each beacon can only be claimed by one team. If your squad is the only one present at a beacon when the round ends, you ascend to the next floor, no problem. But if at least one other team is present, it’s a fight to the death to determine which single squad moves on. Teams that are killed–whether during the exploration phase of a round or during the final fight over a beacon–are knocked out of the match for good.