Arkheron Is A Wild PvP Dungeon Crawler (And Could Become Your New Obsession)

The current gaming landscape is full of experimental approaches. Games that take cues from other properties are a given in the medium, with developers building on influence to create something that feels wholly unique and new. Arkheron is one such effort, and a quietly successful one at that.

Designed for nearly a decade by a team led by a long-time Blizzard veteran, Arkheron brings a vivid sense of worldbuilding that quickly lays the groundwork for engrossing dungeon-crawling PvP gameplay. During a recent media preview, the developers behind Arkheron made a strong case for it as your next gaming obsession.

How Arkheron Separates Itself From The Pack

Arkheron is a hard game to describe and even harder to put down once you've gotten into it. The game plays almost like a mix of Diablo and PUBG with a dash of Hades, with a top-down perspective as players make their way through sprawling dungeons. You'll encounter CPU enemies in these halls, with rewards and treasure chests scattered throughout.

The mission is to find the best gear you can, mixing a solid range of weapon types to create a new build on the fly. Weapons and gear from the same set come with added bonuses, and a full set even lets players take on the role of one of the remnant souls at the core of the game—unlocking their expanded abilities in the process.

Even having all those comparison points doesn't quite do the game justice. The sense of exploration and challenge is heightened by the occasionally shrinking playfield, which requires players to find sanctuary in certain small spaces in hopes of advancing to the next round. However, there are only a few on each level, and there are far too many teams of three to get through.

The result is the core PvP element of the gameplay, where players use the skills they've honed and the weapons they've found to overcome rival teams and advance further up the spire. This is where the preparation and strategy meet pure gameplay and skill, with fights that have a certain level of over-the-top escalation that luckily feels even across the board. No one is OP when everyone is.

A fast-paced run through the dungeon highlighted how quick Arkheron is in comparison to other dungeon crawlers and roguelikes, with an emphasis on adaptation and combat keeping the sprawling world from being lost in the larger world. It maintains its purposefully frantic sense of pace, where you can find yourself lost in the wonder of the world and then suddenly dueling an enemy team.

The game's focus on three-player teams is another strength, along with its quietly unique approach to aiming and combat that keeps players engaged on a moment-to-moment basis. The result is a game that benefits from its natural sense of speed. Arkheron is the perpetual approach to rougelikes that fans of Hades won't be able to put down.

Ron Pardo Breaks Down The Evolution Of Arkeron

One of the chief creatives on the game is Bonfire Studios CEO Rob Pardo (former Chief Creative Officer of Blizzard Entertainment). Alongside other veterans of the games industry, Pardo has spent the better part of a decade building Arkheron into a sustainable addition to the gaming landscape.

Designed as a cross-platform title with a rotating number of upgrades available to players (and rife for additional content), the purpose of the game has always been to engage with players across multiple genre fandoms. Naturally, the game evolved in lots of ways during this period, with Pardo explaining that it embraced other approaches more openly at various points in development.

"I think the thing that happens, at least with a more iterative style of game development, is that you end up with choices along the way. You learn something unexpected, and then you either fix something or lean into a happy accident. Probably one of our biggest moments was figuring out the control paradigm, which is pretty unique.

A lot of people might watch a screenshot or a trailer, but I don't think we've had anyone who's actually put a controller in their hands or used a mouse and went, 'Oh yeah, this is exactly how I thought that was going to play...' It was definitely more of a conventional Diablo-style, point-and-click sort of game.

The problem was that it never really felt like it was going to get us to really find a good team-based PVP paradigm. We just kept going through iterations. I think the one that we ended up with is probably the fourth iterative prototype we did. It took a long time to get through all those prototypes."

According to Pardo, the game's mix of elements ended up being a decisive feature of the game as it took cues from other genres without being beholden to any specific play style. "I think the battle royale inspiration was more deliberate, but even with that, from the very beginning we kind of liked this idea that you're going to ascend through a town.

"That format was an interesting starting point with the large shrinking circle, but it doesn't really work like a top-down game. So we had to go through a similar sort of evolution process until we arrived at mechanical engineering. It gets tricky with these things because I can use the shortcuts, you can use comparisons.

"It's a little bit like this, a little bit like that. But then it makes it sound like a fusion game, and it's really not. It's uniquely Arkheron, and you can see elements from other games. The "Ascension" mode is almost a Magic: The Gathering draft; you have to build based on what you get. But it would be silly to compare this to a TCG."

The result is a game where combat feels fluid and based on your own adventurous spirit. Unlocking a powerful weapon requires a keen eye and a willingness to venture into the unknown for another chest. A bit of luck can also pay off. However, none of it will ever feel too overwhelming or underpowered by cycling powers, an approach to balance that Pardo learned from his time on StarCraft.

"The rule when we went from StarCraft to StarCraft 2 was that any new unit we created for a race meant that we were killing an old unit. I felt like the complexity was really good and that it makes the game really interesting, but let's not make it too complex. I think the struggle in a lot of the hero-competitive games, whether that be MOBAs or hero shooters, is that they don't retire characters.

"It creates this never-ending complexity... we really believe in a gameplay and player-first mentality when we approach all decisions. We have art, game design, engineering. But we're always putting on our player hat. Gameplay is always in the center. There are some studios that might be more focused on art and aesthetics, which is fine. It's just that we're a gameplay-central studio."

It all comes together in a compelling package, easy to see as a new multiplayer favorite for friends who want to challenge themselves. While it might have a lot of tough competition in the broader gaming landscape, the uniqueness and craft in Arkheron make it well worth venturing into the tower.