Lazarus Is An 'MMO Roguelike' That Restarts Every Week

Lazarus is the famous story of the man who was raised from the dead (read more here). It is also what my dad used to call me when I crawled out of bed at 1pm on the weekends. But now it has a new meaning: a free top-down shmup where hundreds of players duke it out in a huge persistent world, only to implode and restart every week.

Lazarus [official site, the game, being made by Spilt Milk Studios, who made Tango Fiesta, and promises dogfights over scarce resources, tech upgrades and 1000 players at a time. All this spread over a spacey map that takes 37 minutes to cross from corner to corner. Every week the universe will start anew, in a "sci-fi twist on Groundhog Day." The exact nature of death in this world isn't clear yet, though.

We asked Andrew Smith, Design Director, if dying resulted in your elimination from the game until the next restart - effectively a week-long "permadeath".

"You've hit close to the mark but not quite," he said. "There's a weekly rhythm too, the death-to-death is more forgiving."

Intriguing. A closed beta begins on August 12th, which you can sign up for here.

Does anybody else think the Phoenix would be a better legend to reference? If we want to get mythical (and I insist that we do, baby), the name is ALL WRONG. Lazarus only came back from the dead that one time. Big whoop. The Phoenix comes back again and again.

Anyway, we all know the best sci-fi twist on Groundhog Day already exists. It's called Edge of Tomorrow and it was the best videogame of 2014.