Bonfire Studiosan indie video game developer started by Rob Pardue and other game experts in 2016, is finally coming out of stealth mode, revealing its first project. Archeron.
Founded by the industry experts responsible for iconic franchises including Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo, Overwatch, StarCraft, and World of Warcraft, the Bonfire team draws on the experience and design principles leveraged in those titles to craft innovative new player versus player (PvP) gameplay. Rob Pardue, CEO of Irvine, California-based Bonfire Studios, said in an exclusive interview with GamesBeat.
Private playtests for Arkheron are already underway and will be expanded in the coming months through ongoing invitations. Players who love fast-paced player versus player (PvP) combat are encouraged to register 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 has spent eight years making the game so far, but he noted that it took about 1.5 years to build the studio and do the prototyping to find the fun. The real work on Arkheron itself began in 2018, and even then has involved a lot of ongoing playtesting to get it right. Thus the game has been in the works for nearly six years.
“We were thrown curveballs,” Pardo said. “We didn’t expect to be in the middle of development when the global pandemic hit.”
As an example of a curveball, the team had to spend about nine months creating the network’s backend architecture to accommodate the type of combat it wanted.
We’re not sure what that means yet as Bonfire is slowly revealing the game.
The company has been playing and iterating on Arkheron behind the scenes for years and began private playtesting sessions with a small community in 2024. While players will find familiar ideas and concepts in Arkheron, it’s not about combining genres – it’s about creating something entirely new; A dynamic, fast-paced PvP experience set in a dark and foreboding world. The game is played top-down, unlike first-person or third-person games, Pardo said.
The game doesn’t have a deep story, so it’s no 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 will also be a live service game as well.
The Bonfire team tests the game every day, and credits this aspect of their development process with helping them create a fun and unique game that they believe will resonate with players. It was designed using the Unity game engine, with modifications created by Bonfire itself.
“There is a simple truth that lies at the heart of our development philosophy,” Pardo said. “If we don’t love our game, our players won’t either. We believe that the best games are born from a genuine love of playing them, which is why we’ve spent years of passion developing Arkheron, constantly iterating and improving it to deliver something truly unique and exciting.
He added: “We’ve been playing the game daily as a team for years, and while we haven’t yet figured out exactly how to describe it, we often say ‘You have to play it to get it.’ We’re excited to start sharing the fun we’ve found in Arkheron with the wider community soon, and we hope players love it as much as we do.” .
Bonfire’s design philosophy focuses on fun and highly rewarding gameplay, imaginative worlds that inspire self-expression, and welcoming, long-lasting communities and experiences that become a meaningful part of players’ lives.
Players who register through the site will have the opportunity to be invited to Test your gameplayBut the easiest way is to find a friend who’s already playing, because Archeron is best when played with friends, the company says. Access is currently limited to North America, but Bonfire plans to continue expanding playtesting to other regions throughout the year.
New funding has been raised
When the company launched in 2018, Bonfire Studios raised $25 million from Andreessen Horowitz (A16z) and Riot Games. He noted that investors have been supportive along the way.
Building on last week’s revelation of a partnership with Hybe IM to deploy Arkheron in Korea and Japan, Bonfire has also secured new investments from A16z, Founders Fund, and Altos Ventures, among others, which will fuel the remaining development of Arkheron as the team prepares for it. For global launch.
Pardo said he believes the company has what it needs now to launch the game. But he did not reveal the total of the latest financing round.
As Bonfire continues its work on Arkheron, the studio is growing, with open roles for the engineering, art, audio, and publishing teams. Interested candidates can learn more and apply on the Bonfire website.
Game description?
Arkheron is set in a dark fantasy world that the team likes to call an “absolutely beautiful” art style. But he noted that it is still different from the style of games such as the Souls-like or Diablo games.
Regarding the art style and gameplay, Pardo said: “With potential investors, publishers or players, we didn’t find the right way to describe it in a way that really paints the right picture for the game. This is one of the reasons why we conduct special playtests.
“The only way to really know and understand the game is to play the game,” he said.
But it’s a competitive team-based multiplayer game, with what Pardo calls an “innovative and different combat style.” “It’s not a shooting game or like any other kind of game,” he said. It is one of those that you have to see to understand.
“It’s in this cool 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. It created a lot of challenges for us to explain it well to people. Because people always get the wrong impression,” Pardo said. “They got the wrong image of the game.”
In response to a question about the gameplay, Pardo said that he had not revealed that yet. The team is only revealing high-level information, but Pardo said that if you know its history, it will have the same familiar design principles and philosophies.
“It’s very fast and it’s not turn-based or anything like that. It has its own unique combat style. It’s not really a shooter. It’s not a point-and-click like Diablo,” he said. “We hope to make it playable on console from the beginning.” . So it’s actually very useful for playing with a console. We are planning to release it on current generation consoles alongside PC.
In response to a question about the roadmap, Pardo said that the company has conducted a lot of testing within its circle of friends and family. Now this will happen with real players who have nothing to do with the company. This testing will likely begin in the next month or so.
“From that point forward, we will continue to develop the game based on what we learned from our playtesting,” Pardo said.
Making the game
Bonfire Studios has grown to 70 people now. Production began about a year ago, and the art department has grown to 40 people.
Regarding the process, Pardo said the team tried to make everyone at the company comfortable with demoing games, from engineers to business people to game designers. The team then had to further structure this approach, limiting the game deck to perhaps five segments. This resulted in dozens of pitches and the team had to decide what to pursue.
The company began prototyping seven different ideas and “planted the seeds into seedlings,” Pardo said.
The team created “mood boards” and worked on the ideas for a few weeks each. Then they decided which one to build.
“I never planned on taking more than five years to make a game, to be honest with you, but because the development style I’ve always used, which we use at Bonfire, has always been very iterative, look for – a fun model, it’s not a straight line.” “You have accidents and discoveries.” Happy. You’re going the wrong way and you need to start in a different direction. We build the game from the inside out, and once we start really finding the fun, it starts to get more momentum.
In this sense, the process of making the game was very similar to what happened at Blizzard. He said with every match, you learn a lot, make mistakes, and find wisdom that takes you forward. After Blizzard finishes the game, it will perform an autopsy. But he noted that next time, different challenges will arise in the creative process. Technology will change, and the art style may need to be rebooted.
“More than anything, what I’ve learned is to try to make sure you build conviction about the game as you go along,” he said.
