Choose your side in this faction-based survival game, pitting groups of players against each other amid hordes of horrific demons in an ongoing epic war.

Explore a mysterious and unforgiving world in search of resources and powerful artifacts as you race against the clock to achieve the glory of victory before you are wiped from existence. Carve a unique niche for yourself with RPG-like talent and skill systems, allowing you to tailor your character to any play style. Expand your technology and knowledge with your faction to unlock new heights of power to wield against your foes. Defend your base against an ever increasing onslaught form the unyielding armies of the Lost, and from enemy player factions.

Survival is only the first step, as there can only be one victor.

Will you be lost and forgotten, or will you emerge as champions?

Rend is currently available on Steam Early Access for $29.99 USD.

As a small independent developer, it’s vital that we plan out our team’s bandwidth wisely given the finite resources we have available. We have found during this initial phase of Early Access that a weekly patch deployment is resulting in smaller patches and taking focus away from quality content that requires more time to design, test, and implement. After hearing more about what’s most important to the player community, we are shifting to a patch cadence of every 3-4 weeks that will ultimately lead to larger, more significant releases for Rend.

This change in timing will allow us to make impactful updates to Rend’s core gameplay influenced by our community’s constructive critiques and our own player experiences in sagas. Once these adjustments are in place, we can demonstrate the additional game modes we have in development: we’ll introduce them on some of our existing official servers. Rest assured that we’ll continue to deploy hotfixes as needed, the next of which is planned for this week and applies ready-to-deploy bug fixes related to Master quality weapons.

Frostkeep Studios are continuing to make tweaks and improvements based upon community feedback. As we enter the Fall and Winter months, the team has officially revealed the development roadmap for Rend leading into and throughout 2019.

• Comprehensive Combat Improvements
  • Tightens up the gunplay to bring it in line with modern shooters.
  • Enhances the aesthetics of combat, making it feel more impactful.
  • Updates all creatures with new abilities and behaviors to make interacting with them more interesting in and out of combat.
  • Adjusts all biomes to feel more robust and challenging.
• Streamlined Features
  • Overhauls game aspects such as crafting, storage, and much more with the intent of making Rend more accessible.
  • Introduces a new way for players to store and share resources intended for faction progression: the stronghold warehouse.
  • Adds account-level settings, allowing players’ Ascension Points to no longer be bound to individual official servers.
• Legendary Artifacts
  • Introduces epic items from Norse mythology, including unique weapons and armor, that can shift the balance of power within a saga.
• Dynamic Siege Combat
  • Makes raiding faction strongholds a more engaging experience.
  • Adds new siege weapons and tools such as catapults and personnel flingers.
  • Additional siege gameplay including bomb counterplay and delay timer for repairing damaged structures, and damage feedback from Divinity Stones.
  • Communicates faction progress towards win conditions more prominently.via Yggdrasil.
• Refined Social Mechanics
  • Shifts decision-making power from Elders to the faction through permission requests and voting.
  • Applies force-fields that repel enemy players to faction stronghold doorways, mitigating griefing.
  • Allows players on a faction to form parties and play more cooperatively in PvE and PvP combat.

Each of these abbreviated topics will be matched with deep-dive feature articles written by the developers who worked on them when introduced in a game update. With game development being a fluid process, consider this roadmap a living document that serves as an overview of what’s planned for Rend, but isn’t final or set in stone: the features may change or shift order before reaching live servers.

In parallel with this roadmap, we’re in the process of updating Rend from Unreal Engine 4.19 to 4.20 to be able to take advantage of the engine's latest improvements such as smarter actor replication (more efficient servers) in future game updates. A Rend mod kit is also being worked on but our focus is primarily on producing and implementing the important gameplay improvements listed above. Game additions such as biomes and creatures are similarly being held until these improvements are in the game to allow players an opportunity to provide feedback independent of new content.

The Frostkeep team is also eager to announce the launch of the Rend Community Issues Trello Board, which will update players of the progress of fixing gameplay bugs, balance issues and more. You can check out the full Road Map at the official Frostkeep Studios website here .

Featuring PvP and PvE, Rend challenges the traditional survival game blueprint with the introduction of player factions, RPG and sandbox elements, win/loss conditions and massive, culminating battle experiences the like of which have never before been witnessed in this genre. 

In Rend, players align with one of three factions before being dropped into a beautiful, but brutal fantasy world where they must strategically team up with other players and friends to battle enemy creatures and rival factions in a relentless and uncompromising struggle for victory. Players choose how they interact and participate in the world, and are immediately connected to a larger community that creates a place and purpose for every type of player.

The world of Rend is vast, varied and host to a myriad of mysterious environments – from majestic grassland valleys and an uncompromising cave system to danger-ridden frozen hellscapes, each of which is home to its own specific resources and perils ensuring that players will be able to find the level of challenge that appeals to them.

Key Features:

• THREE PLAYER FACTIONS: During character creation, players immediately choose to align with one of three in-game communities, including the sly and cunning Conclave (green faction), the proud and brutal Order (orange faction) or the mystical and intelligent Revenant (purple faction). The factions engage in all-out war in a competitive race from humble beginnings to awe-inspiring heights of power in a harrowing struggle for survival and domination
• CHOOSE HOW YOU PLAY: In the game, players must race against opposing factions to gather the lost souls of Rend and deliver them to The Creator. Players decide how they will contribute and participate within the game ecosystem – from harvesting, gathering or crafting roles to more intense assassin, soldier and hunter role options. Regardless of play style, there is a role, place and purpose for every type of player.
• THE WORLD TREE & DIVINITY STONE: Each faction's progress is marked by the World Tree, tracking lost spirits collected and stored within each Divinity Stone. Located within the roots of the World Tree, this giant crystal stores the lost souls gathered by players. Once enough souls have transferred to a faction’s Divinity Stone, that faction ascends and is officially declared the winner.
• MASSIVE, CULMINATING EXPERIENCES: Every week, during a server event called The Reckoning, players must join forces to strategically align and plan how their faction will protect and defend their base and Divinity Stone. The Reckoning takes place at a pre-determined time advertised during server selection. When this takes place, the magical shields protecting each faction’s base will lower, making them susceptible to enemy attacks from creatures – the Lost – and other player factions. With each subsequent Reckoning, the Lost creatures will grow stronger and more powerful forcing each faction to rethink their strategy.
• CAPTURE POINTS: The world will be populated by neutral capture points that can be taken under control at any point by opposing factions. Once a faction controls a capture point, they can build an outpost at that location. On top of the advantages provided by having more buildable locations, outposts will provide players with bonuses in the form of resources or buffs. Beware, however, that when The Reckoning hits, outposts will also be targeted, spreading players’ defensive efforts thin. Of course, other factions may try to take control away at any point so players will need to ensure their faction-controlled capture points are always well defended.
• SERVER LIFECYCLE & META PROGRESSION: After a winning faction is declared, participating players will receive rewards in the form of meta-progression points. These points can be spent on subsequent sessions on that server to unlock further customization and progression options for new characters. For players who find that the win/loss cycle is not for them, private servers options will be available that present a multitude of rule set options allowing them to experience everything they (and their friends) are looking for in the game.
• DEEP CRAFTING PROGRESSION: Crafting is a major component of most survival games, and Rend embraces that by providing a rich crafting progression system. Each recipe players learn can be mastered, unlocking the possibility to create exceptional versions of that item, providing increased power or utility. Recipes are unlocked by skilling up prerequisites in an intricate web of skills or by discovering them while exploring the world. Of course, you could also take gear from your enemies and break it down to see how it’s made. Or better yet, break into players’ bases and steal their research directly.
• WEAPONS: Rend utilizes a tight and responsive shooter-style combat system featuring a wide array of weapon types. As players use different weapons, they will increase their skill and eventually unlock customization paths to specialize in different uses of that weapon. For example, a player who is highly experienced with bows may choose between a more stationary, long-range sniper role, dealing massive damage in a single shot or a quick and tenacious hunter role capable of hounding and chasing down targets on the run. Players can further customize their play style with weapon modifications, adding lights, scopes, addition clip capacity, and more.
• TALENT SYSTEM: Players can decide how they will customize their character and experiences to match their play style and needs of their faction through a deep talent system. Players can explore being an Assassin, Survivalist, Soldier, or Mystic. Each role is accompanied by an extensive skill tree that allows players to build a unique set of capabilities to set themselves apart from everyone else
• SKILL SYSTEM: In Rend, players can continue to customize their experience further as they skill up their progression for in-game activities like harvesting, crafting, weaponry, hunting, magic, armor, exploring unforgiving areas of the game and more. Players can carve out unique and vital roles within their faction as they specialize in the activities they enjoy most.
• BASE BUILDING: Each faction must construct a base of operations to call home. Crafting and research stations, resource refineries, storage spaces and more will be housed inside a defensive fortress architected by players in the faction. During The Reckoning, factions will be called upon to protect their base against the Lost and enemy player factions. Players will also be able to build personal homes or group together in clans to build satellite bases. The Lost will not attack these smaller bases, but other factions will be itching to break in and rearrange it for you.
• FUTURE FEATURES: Rend will continue to expand to include more features and content as requested by the player community, including more creatures, weapons, game systems, spells, skills, customization options, game modes, and additional custom server options.

Frostkeep Studios was created by three game developers – Solomon Lee, Mat Milizia and Jeremy Wood – who met 15 years ago working together on the original World of Warcraft, Overwatch, League of Legends, WildStar, and more. Over the last year, Frostkeep Studios has assembled a talented team of game developers and contractors, including Overwatch composer Neal Acree, to contribute to the creation of the studio’s first game, Rend.