Alara Prime Preview: A Hero Shooter Trying to Create Trends Instead of Chase Them

Picture the innermost circle at the end of a battle royale shooter match: a handful of fully equipped squads spending every resource available to try and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat—and other players. Now mix in the tactical nature of competitive shooters like Rainbow Six: Siege with its gadgets and role-driven gameplay or the sharp shooting of Counter Strike. That’s the white-knuckle, high-skill, competitive environment that Fall Damage is trying to create in Alara Prime.

Originally revealed earlier this year, Alara Prime aims to bring a new spin to the tactical shooter genre. Instead of two teams, three teams of four duke it out in tight corridors and lanes, using helpful gadgets to control the map. One team defends an objective while the other two try to steal it while outthinking and outplaying each other in their race to the MacGuffin in the middle. This might sound like a simple tweak to a tested formula, but after an hour-long conversation with the Fall Damage team, I have a feeling Alara Prime will feel fresh to even the most experienced players.

Fall Damage has set up an impressive, intricate web of interlocking mechanics that funnel players into complex skirmishes. One of the coolest ways they’ve guaranteed a sense of perpetual motion (and destruction) is by giving each team a separate timer tied to their objective. Where the defending team needs to lock down their base for a given amount of time, one of the attacking teams might have a more generous timer as they try to figure out a way to breach the defenders’ turf. Meanwhile, the second attacking team could squander their chance to win by trying to wait out the storm but run out of time.

Each team can see the other squads’ timers, creating a compelling cat-and-mouse game where teams can anticipate their opponents moves and try to stab them in the back. This also plays into Alara Prime’s emphasis on map awareness and control, which Fall Damage continually highlighted during the session. For example, players can place helpful gadgets like immobilizing traps or barriers in key spots to get the jump on an enemy team mid-rush or block off a key lane to funnel opponents into a blender of bullets.

But no strategy is airtight. Some gadgets or strategies counter each other, setting up a recurring rock-paper-scissors-style dynamic which feels appropriate given Alara Prime’s three-team setup.

That potentially chaotic scale isn’t the only thing setting Fall Damage’s upcoming Mexican standoff simulator apart from more conventional shooters, though. Set in a futuristic alternate reality, Alara Prime sees cyborgs duke it out in a combat sport. There are no cops and robbers, no terrorists or militiae; it’s a tactical war game played out by cyborgs controlled from a distance for an excited audience. That allows Alara Prime to get a little weird compared to some of the other tactical shooters out there now, like the aforementioned Siege and Counter Strike. This setting takes the battle to slightly more colorful (though not busy) locations than you’d expect from a game like this.

That setting is also a source of Fall Damage’s approach to monetization: since Alara Prime is a free-to-play game, the studio founded by DICE veterans plans to pay the bills by including cosmetic stuff to buy for your character like different outfits and skins for your guns. There are plans to include more options for customization like gun charms down the road, but Fall Damage seems focused on getting the game in players’ hands first.

Alara Prime also looks like it’s trying to buck the hero shooter trend in that, instead of focusing on specific characters or operators to determine abilities and traits, it’s chasing a role-based system. With four roles, Alara Prime likely won’t have as strong of a focus on a diverse cast of characters with predetermined movements and abilities like you’ll find in Overwatch or Marvel Rivals.

The focus here is zeroed in on competitive play and player feedback, so a lot of what I saw during my session will likely evolve into something new once Alara Prime eventually releases and more people play the game and provide feedback. The developers repeatedly clarified that they were willing to chase any number of ideas and strategies to ensure an optimized, sharpened competitive edge from launch. At the moment, Fall Damage hopes to release Alara Prime in some playable form later this year.