The first few enemies in Horde Arena probably aren’t going to cause too much trouble. Give it a few waves however and you’ll be inundated as you desperately try to stay alive.
FiveFiveSix Games’ third-person shooter roguelite enters Early Access today, dropping you into an arena where enemies keep coming, every round gives you another chance to make your character stronger, and eventually there are enough things charging across the battlefield that those early waves start to feel quite friendly.
You can tackle the horde alone or bring up to three other players into online co-op, with four different classes to choose from and weapons, Traits, stats, and character evolutions to build around as the run continues.
The aim is simply to survive for as long as possible.
Your Class Gets Much Stronger as the Horde Does
There are four classes available, each bringing its own weapons, skills, and combat style into the arena. That gives everyone in a four-player group room to approach the fight differently, but picking a class is only the beginning of what happens to it during a run. As the waves get harder, you can evolve your character into stronger forms, eventually choosing between two final evolutions for each class.
That choice lets you take the same starting class in different directions depending on what the run needs and how you want to play. Weapons can be improved along the way too. Killing enemies earns money, which can then be put back into upgrades so your damage has some chance of keeping up with everything the arena is sending at you. The enemies aren’t going to wait while you finish putting the build together, so keeping those upgrades moving becomes increasingly important as each new wave arrives.
By the later rounds, the character you started with should look very different from the one currently trying to keep half the arena away from them.
Traits Give You Another Way to Build
Character evolutions aren’t the only decisions you’ll be making between all the shooting. Traits appear between battles and let you improve different parts of your character, whether that means increasing stats, making skills stronger, or adding something that works particularly well with the build you already have.
That means there are a few things developing at once. Your weapons are getting stronger, your class is moving towards an evolution, and Traits are filling in the rest as you work out what will actually help you survive the next group of enemies. Then Horde Arena throws a roulette wheel into the middle of it.
Breaks between rounds give you an opportunity to spin for another reward, adding a little luck to all the upgrades you’ve been carefully choosing. Get something useful and it could give the build exactly what it was missing. Get something less helpful and you’ll have to head into the next wave with the weapons, Traits, and evolutions you’ve already managed to put together.
There isn’t much time to complain about the result once the shooting starts again anyway.
Four Players Can Take On the Horde Together
While Horde Arena can be played solo, co-op is a big part of the game. Up to four players can fight together online, letting a full group bring all four classes into the same run. With each class offering its own skills and two possible final evolutions, there’s plenty of room for everyone to build towards something different rather than four players simply chasing the same upgrades.
Early Access follows several months of demo testing, with FiveFiveSix Games using player feedback to make changes ahead of launch. The final demo update in July included improvements to movement, UI, character evolution effects, and enemy feedback, while also introducing the Player Unique Trait upgrade system for testing. The demo was removed in September to make way for today’s release.