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At first glance, it would be easy to call Fall Damage Studios’ upcoming shooter, ALARA Prime, cookie cutter. It looks like Valorant, plays like Counter-Strike 2, and features many mechanics inspired by Rainbow Six Siege too. But to dismiss the game based on its resemblance to the competition would be a mistake; after all, many games have found success by borrowing liberally from established success stories. The important part is innovation in equal measure.
ALARA Prime certainly does that. It takes the best elements of those aforementioned tac-shooters –the plant/defuse gameplay loop, precision shooting, and emphasis on team play– and packages them in a very unusual 4v4v4 format. This recipe has piqued my interest ever since its initial reveal last year, and I’ve finally had the chance to check it out in an extended closed playtest. Boy, was I impressed.
The following preview is supported by excerpts from a brief interview with Dan Vaderlind, Game Director & Fall Damage COO, who took the time to respond to some of my questions about ALARA Prime over the past week.
ALARA Prime’s 4v4v4 Gameplay Turns the Familiar Fresh
ALARA Prime is still very early in development. It’s a pre-alpha, in fact — even though it’s technically had that tag for over a year and is several builds beyond the very first playtest in 2022 which carried that same denotation. Still, during this latest playtest session, there were only two maps: Oasis, and Reactor, the latter of which is void of proper artwork and very much still on the drawing board.
Before diving into the maps, though, let’s start from the top and drill into what ALARA Prime is and how it plays. As I’ve already mentioned, ALARA Prime is a 4v4v4 game in which two opposing attacking teams fight towards a defended “uplink” to which they must upload data. As an attacking team, you locate the Uplink site, then “upload” and wait until a timer ticks down to win the round.
The inclusion of a third team introduces a dynamic layer of strategy and unpredictability, ensuring that every match is a unique and thrilling experience. We believe our game will attract players from Valorant, CS, and Siege, offering them a new and exciting challenge that they can’t get anywhere else. In essence, while we are taking a lot of inspiration from the best games in the genre, we are dedicated to crafting an original and captivating gaming experience that will challenge players from all corners of the tactical shooter community.
Given there are two attacking teams, in theory, both can work together to breach the defenders, but that rarely happens. More often than not they’re attacking from opposite sides and either meet on-site once the defenders are taken care of or flank each other while other fighting is going on. Whoever’s left has the opportunity to go and claim the Uplink and upload to try and win the round, while the defenders attempt to cling on.
Finally, Another Point-and-Click Tac-Shooter
ALARA Prime does shooting the old-fashioned way. Like Valorant and Counter-Strike, weapons are accurate from hipfire. Hallelujah! Finally, another modern shooter that doesn’t insist on players aiming down sights, which franchises like Call of Duty and Battlefield made an industry standard over a decade ago. As a result, in combination with a lack of run-and-gun and punishing recoil, ALARA Prime is a shooting experience that puts a focus on precise crosshair placement. There’s a spray pattern, but the low time-to-kill rewards players who can keep their cool and dance in a strafe, shoot, strafe manner.
This all makes for a high-skill ceiling that tac-shooter enthusiasts will love. If I could nitpick, I’d actually like to see the dev team lean further into this; an even lower time-to-kill, a faster rate of fire, and less ADS moving forward. CS and Valorant have some of the best gunplay of any tac-shooters, so I don’t see a reason not to follow suit. There’s every chance shooting and movement mechanics will continue to be tweaked in the build-up to launch, though, as Vaderlind told me:
While we are pleased with the overall feel, we understand that the nuances matter and the job is never really done. It is going to be a process of continuous refinement and polishing. Just to give you an example, in the past week alone, we were fine-tuning specific aspects, such as air control, and prior to that, we were meticulously adjusting the accuracy window during counter-strafing. We are also in the middle of adding a better camera shake behavior to improve the feel of shooting and recoil.
Throw Your Toys… Er, Gadgets
Gadgets in ALARA Prime play a huge role in determining the outcome of a round. You can’t expect to win without effectively using them both individually and in synergy with your buddies. That means learning how, and in ALARA Prime there are a lot of gadgets. Possibly too many. Smoke, flash, and H.E. grenades are familiar enough from other tac-shooters, but others require more trial and error to understand. Some reveal enemies, others provide a stealth blanket to ghost behind enemies and launch surprise attacks. All in all, there’s a plethora of attacking utility, and then the added layer of various equipment one can use to seal off Uplink sites as a defender, too. Oh, more or less every weapon in the game has a secondary fire mode that each has unique offensive properties as well.
Thankfully, very few of these utility pieces are directly used for killing enemies. Gunplay always feels front and center, and precision shooting typically decides 1v1 encounters. But it has to be said that there’s… a lot. I can see it being a big barrier for tac-shooter newbies. Compared to a game like Valorant, though Riot Games’ popular shooter has 20 or so Agents with unique abilities to learn, they’re all pretty intuitive and access is restricted to all of them as part of its progression loop. ALARA Prime is a class-based game in which one is presented with a whole lot of gadgetry right from the off.
It occurs to me that, when playtesting a game like ALARA Prime, everyone involved is a blank slate. We were all experimenting and limit-testing, equally clueless. That won’t be the case in the initial weeks after ALARA Prime’s full launch when newcomers will struggle to find their footing against more experienced players. You could say the same of any game, I suppose, but when there are this many gadgets thrown on top of its unfamiliar 4v4v4 layout and precision shooting, I can see players getting overwhelmed.
“…our plan is to have ranked play available right from the full launch of ALARA Prime. However, we are considering a brief initial period during which we collect skill data to ensure the most accurate matchmaking experience before officially enabling the feature. Ranked play is a fundamental aspect of our game, and we are committed to delivering it as an integral part of the overall ALARA Prime launch.”
Ranked will obviously be important to keep players of different skill levels in the right places, but I still think there will be a big learning gap beyond entry-level ranks for beginner players to overcome. The dev team will need to carefully balance the depth of utility with keeping it all relatively simple and intuitive. Even after a few hours playing ALARA Prime, I found myself still struggling to get my head around how everything worked, and I’ve had years (decades) of tac-shooter experience with Valorant and Counter-Strike.
ALARA Prime’s 4v4v4 nature also presents some challenges to map design. Unlike in Valorant and Counter-Strike, in which maps are divided evenly between attackers and defenders, ALARA Prime is obviously split three ways. Defenders spawn at one of two Uplink sites on the map, Attackers then close in from opposite sides. This means that in a given “cycle” (round) there are vast areas of the map unused. The empty space tempts some players into wild flanking missions, but the real issue is that cycles of ALARA Prime are void of the typical early-round map control battles that form a key part of other tac-shooters.
Maps don’t have many contestable areas like, say, “mid” in Valorant’s Ascent or CS2’s Mirage because the action is sometimes in one place, and in other cycles somewhere else (depending on where the Uplink is). Players simply push toward the Uplink objective and either meet the opposing attack team by chance or not until they’ve found into site.
I think that’s a missed opportunity. Void of that early-round map control element to each cycle, ALARA Prime feels like it’s missing strategic depth. I’ll admit that incorporating something of this effect into a 4v4v4 game is probably tricky. After all, if two attacking teams were duking it out for the first 50 seconds of a cycle, would the defending team get bored? Perhaps there should be some incentive for them to move out of their site and take part in this hypothetical early-round scenario. I’m not quite sure what the answer is, but I feel as though for attacking teams to simply funnel toward the objective round after round is shallow by comparison to other tac-shooters.
As someone who loves brainstorming tactics for multiplayer tac-shooters, I want the depth of innovating ways to cut enemies off from key areas of the map. If the other teams have equal footing every time, it becomes less about strategy and more about luck. When you factor in all the variables presented by the utility and two attacking teams, I’m worried that the skill ceiling relative to ALARA Prime’s overall design premise is lacking. Then again, maybe I just need to play more.
What I will say is that not helping the issue, the maps themselves sometimes feel overly complex. I found there were too many nooks and crannies, and too many hallways skirting the perimeter of maps that perhaps don’t need to exist. Notably, the dev team has shrunk the map size of Oasis since its initial playtest of the map last year. I think generally speaking a simpler approach to map design would serve the game better, presenting clearer lines of territory and speeding up engagements.
On-Going Development
Clearly, there’s plenty for Fall Damage Studios to work on. But that’s to be expected, and it’s exactly what these playtest sessions are all about. Thankfully the team seems very committed to listening to community feedback, which fills me with hope that ALARA Prime is likely to continue moving in the right direction.
In our monthly Discord community playtests, players get firsthand experience with the ‘Oasis’ map, which is undergoing final polishing. They also playtest our new work-in-progress blockout maps. We actively encourage and appreciate the community’s input in shaping our maps, it ensures that we deliver the best gameplay possible for them. Their insight plays a crucial role not only in refining existing maps, but also in guiding our design process for new ones.
I’ve no doubt based on my experience previewing the game and speaking with members of the team that Fall Damage Studios is committed to building a tac-shooter that incorporates the very best elements from the genre’s best while standing on its own feet as something unique. I’ll be keeping my eye on its development closely, and will hopefully have many more opportunities to playtest the builds ahead of its full 2024 launch later this year.
You can follow ALARA Prime’s Discord to keep tabs on development, and even join future playtests yourself.
