Skip to main content

Naraka: Bladepoint open beta is one of the most-played games on Steam

The fantasy battle royale's final beta runs until Tuesday

I've been interested in the grappling hooks and swords of Chinese fantasy battle royale Naraka: Bladepoint, and apparently I'm not the only one. The final open beta test has started ahead of August's launch, and it's presently the sixth-most played game on Steam, squeezing ahead of GTA 5 and Rust. Goodness me. Quite a few people up for parkouring around, flinging arrows and spells, and transforming into monsters, then. You could join 'em.

Watch on YouTube

The beta is live now on Steam (hit that Download Demo button), running until Tuesday the 22nd of June. This is the final open beta, developers 24 Entertainment say.

Since the last beta, the devs say they've improved the parkour a lot, with better controls and fewer accidents, as well as improving performance, tweaking balance a lot, working on anti-cheat, and adding a spear weapon. See the beta patch notes for more.

I missed the last beta because timing didn't work out for me but dang, it's certainly found fans. Last night it peaked at fifth on Steam's charts of concurrent players, edging out Team Fortress 2 too. That'll doubtless change when the full game launches and actually costs money (usually for a modern battle royale, it's not free-to-play) but it's a promising sign if you want to parkour around and stab people. Which I do. I'm talking about me. I'll start that 15GB client download now and try to make time this weekend.

Naraka: Bladepoint is due to launch August 12th on Steam, priced at £18/€20/$20.

Read this next