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Alta, the studio behind A Township Tale (2021), is getting ready to launch open playtesting for its upcoming dungeon-crawler extraction game REAVE.

The News

While Reave has technically had a number of playtests starting earlier this year, they’ve required users to sign up for the game’s Discord (invite link) and get approval first.

Now, the studio is opening up playtesting to anyone with the launch of Reave: Limited Access, which is coming to Quest on December 4th. You can find it on the Horizon Store for Quest 3, a special invite for Quest 2, and also on Steam for PC VR headsets.

This means users won’t need to follow the Discord, get approvals or sign up, as anyone will be able to install and join playtests going forward. While playtests are still going to be time limited, Alta says they’re be “more open, frequent, and easy to join.”

And if you haven’t heard of Reave, here’s the skinny: Reave is all about facing off against terrifying monsters as you fight your way back to the surface with your bag of loot—which can be tough, since you’ll also encounter fellow players looking for an easy score.

For the most up-to-date look at Reave, check out the studio’s latest devlog below:

My Take

I am genuinely excited for Reave. A Township Tale revealed just how much expertise Alta has in creating immersive, object-oriented VR experiences, and I’m definitely expecting the same care and attention here.

I think I love the concept not only for how cool dungeoning in multiplayer is, but also because it promises to serve up authentic emergent encounters. You could be fighting for your life on the edge of victory against a monster as a fresh squad of bandits smash in, looking to rob you blind. It all sounds like bringing an episode of Delicious in Dungeon to life. So far, cooking hasn’t been confirmed to be an in-game feature, which so far doesn’t seem like a core gameplay element anyway, but it could still be pretty neat.

That said, I’ve purposefully not played any of the playtests as I was initially hoping to drop in at early access launch, although I that might change come this week, as the game looks like it’s very nearly ready.