Bonfire Studiosan independent video game developer started by Rob Pardo and other game veterans in 2016, finally came out of stealth mode, revealing his debut project Archeron.

Founded by industry veterans responsible for iconic franchises including Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo, Overwatch, StarCraft and World of Warcraft, the Bonfire team draws on the expertise and design principles honed in those titles to create a new player-versus-player (PvP) game, said Rob Pardo, CEO of the Irvine, California-based Bonfire Studiosin an exclusive interview with GamesBeat.

Private playtesting for Arkheron has begun and will expand in the coming months with rolling invites. Gamers who love fast-paced player-versus-player (PvP) combat are encouraged to sign up now for a chance to be among the first to play Arkheron and help shape the later stages of development. .

I asked Pardo if the team had spent eight years developing the game so far, but he noted that it took about 1.5 years to build the studio and do prototyping to find the fun. The real work on Arkheron itself started in 2018 and even then it involved a lot of continuous playtesting to get it right. And so the game has been in the works for almost six years.

“We’ve been thrown curve balls,” said Pardo. “We don’t expect to be in the middle of development when a global pandemic hits.”

As an example of a curve ball, the team had to spend about nine months creating a backend architecture for networking to accommodate the type of combat it wanted.

We’re still not sure what this means as Bonfire slowly reveals the game.

The company has been playing and modifying Arkheron behind the scenes for years and started private game testing sessions with a small community in 2024. Meanwhile players will find familiar ideas and Arkheron concept, it’s not about combining genres – it’s about creating something new; a dynamic, fast-paced PvP game experience set in a dark and terrifying world. The game is played from a top-down view, as opposed to first-person or third-person games, said Pardo.

The game does not have a deep narrative, and therefore it is not different from games like League of Legends and Overwatch. But it has its own world and its own lore to make it a better PvP game. The game can also be a live-service game as well.

The Bonfire team plays the game every day, and puts this aspect of their development process into helping them create a fun and unique game that they believe will resonate with players. It is built using the Unity game engine, with modifications made by Bonfire itself.

“There is one simple truth at the heart of our development philosophy,” Pardo said. “If we don’t like our game, our players don’t like it either. We believe that the best games are born from a true love of playing them, that’s why we poured years of love into the development of Arkheron, constantly iterating and refining it to deliver something truly which is unique and exciting.

He added, “We’ve been playing the game every day as a team for years, and while we still don’t know how to define it, we usually say ‘you have to play it to get it’. We’re excited- excited to start sharing the fun we found in Arkheron with a wider community soon, and we hope players love it as much as we do.

Bonfire’s design philosophy centers on fun and highly rewarding gameplay, imaginative worlds that encourage self-expression, welcoming, sustainable communities and experiences that become a meaningful part of players’ lives.

Players who sign up through the website have a chance to be invited to private gamebut the easiest way is to find a friend who already plays — because Arkheron works best when played with friends, the company said. Access is currently limited to North America, but Bonfire plans to continue expanding the playtest to other regions throughout the year.

New funds raised

Back at the start of the company in 2018, Bonfire Studios raised $25 million from Andreessen Horowitz (A16z) and Riot Games. He noted that investors are supporting the road.

Building on last week’s reveal of a partnership with Hybe IM to publish Arkheron in Korea and Japan, Bonfire has also secured new investments from A16z, Founders Fund and Altos Ventures, among others, which will fuel the rest Arkheron’s development as the team prepares it. for the global launch.

Pardo said he believes the company has what it needs now to start the game. But he did not disclose the total of the latest round of funding.

As Bonfire continues its work on Arkheron, the studio is growing, with open roles in its engineering, art, audio and publishing teams. Interested candidates can learn more and apply on the Bonfire website.

Describing the game?

Arkheron takes place in a dark fantasy universe that the team likes to call a “horribly beautiful” art style. But he noted that it still differs in style from games like Souls-like or Diablo games.

In terms of the art style and the game, Pardo said, “With investors or publishers or potential players, we haven’t found the right way to describe it in a way that paints the right picture for the game. That’s one of the reasons why we do private playtesting.

He said that “the only way to know how to understand the game is to play the game.”

But it’s a team-based multiplayer competitive game, and it has what Pardo calls a “new and different style of combat.” It’s not a shooter or like other genres out there, he said. And this is one of those where you have to see it to understand it.

“It’s in this unique place where it has a lot of familiar concepts from other genres, but the core of the game is really unique and the combat is really unique. This creates a lot of challenges for us to explain it well to people. Because people always get the wrong impression. They got a picture of the wrong game,” said Pardo.

When asked about the gameplay, Pardo said that he has not revealed it yet. The group has only disclosed high-level information, but Pardo said that if you know its history, it shares the same kinds of design principles and philosophies that are familiar.

“It’s very fast and not turn-based or anything like that. It has its own unique style of combat. It’s not really a shooter. It’s not point-and-click like Diablo,” he said. “We hope it’s made playable on the controller from the start. So it’s actually pretty good to play with the controller. We plan to release it on current generation consoles along with PC.

Asked about the roadmap, Pardo said the company has done a lot of testing with their group of friends and family. Now it happens to real players who are not affiliated with the company. That trial will likely begin in the next month or so.

“Then from that point, we will continue to evolve the game based on what we learned in our play testing,” said Pardo.

Make the game

Bonfire Studios has grown to 70 people today. Production began about a year ago, and the art department grew to 40 people.

As far as the process goes, Pardo said the team is trying to make every person in the company comfortable with pitching games, from engineers to business people to game designers. The team had to put more structure into that approach, limiting the game deck to maybe five slides. Several pitches resulted and the team had to decide what to do next.

It started prototyping seven different ideas and “seeds grew into saplings,” Pardo said.

The team created “mood boards” and worked on ideas for several weeks each. Then they decided which one to build.

“I never planned to spend five years making a game, to be honest with you, but because the development style that I always use, and we use at Bonfire, is always changing , find out – it’s a fun kind of model, it’s not a straight line,” he said. “You have happy accidents and discoveries. You go down the wrong path and you have to start in a different direction. We build the game from the inside out and then once we start looking for fun, then you start to get more momentum.

In that sense, the process of creating the game is like what happened at Blizzard. He said in every game, you learn a ton, make mistakes, and find wisdom to carry you forward. After a game by Blizzard, it will do a post-mortem. But he noticed that next time, different challenges will arise in the creative process. Technology changes, art style may need a reboot.

“Most of all, what I’ve learned is to try to make sure you build conviction about the game as you go along,” he said.