Elden Ring: Nightreign is an odd direction for the franchise to take. The Souls games have always included an element of multiplayer, but they've never actually focused on multiplayer. Likewise, they've always been about dying and trying again, but never in the true roguelike fashion. It's no wonder that longtime fans are looking askance at a multiplayer, run-based roguelike spin-off of the absurdly bulky Elden Ring. Having spent some time with the game during the network beta test last weekend, the experience is definitely different, but it has potential.

Nightreign'sbasic structure is both familiar and distinct. You and two other players are dropped into an Elden Ring-esque landscape that's filled with equipment, items and monsters. You begin with only your class's basic abilities. By exploring, you'll find bosses you can fight, loot you can equip, and treasure chests full of different weapons. When defeated, the bosses drop glowing orbs that offer a chance of high-quality weapons or passive bonuses that range from faster stamina regeneration to causing lightning to strike when you walk.

Your goal is to survive two days of this sped-up Elden Ring gameplay, followed by a third day during which you fight a boss. As you can imagine, death comes quickly if you aren't careful, but death usually isn't final. Sites of Grace return from Elden Ring. By finding one, you can level up and improve your stats. Dying sends you back to a checkpoint and drains one of those precious levels. Once you reach the bosses, there's no respawning. You get one shot. Thankfully, your fellow co-op players can give you a second shot. Once defeated, you're downed, and by attacking your downed body, allies can heal you and bring you back to your feet. The more often you are downed, the more "damage" it takes to heal you, and you only have about 15 seconds before the death becomes permanent.

Movement has also significantly changed from Elden Ring. Your characters are all incredibly agile and swift. You can run on the ground with a super sprint, but you can also perform wall jumps to gain additional height. On top of that, there's no fall damage in the game, so you can leap off the highest pillar to the lowest valley and take no damage. Of all the changes in Nightreign, this is easily my favorite. The additional mobility options are powerful enough that I would adore the chance to play classic Elden Ring in that way.

However, this mobility is necessary due to the major limiting factor of exploration. In a distinctly Fortnite twist, the entire landscape is surrounded by a gradually shrinking circle of doom. As a round progresses, this circle gradually shrinks, and it speeds up at predetermined times. If you're caught outside of the ring, your health rapidly drops. At the end of a day, you'll be trapped in a roughly circular arena, and that's where the boss spawns. This adds some major time pressure to the game. Confronting minibosses becomes a balance between doing enough damage to make it worth the time spent — and the very real risk that you could run out of time mid-fight and need to retreat.

Character builds are also slightly different. Instead of having one generic character who you level up, there are different classes, each with specialties and distinct abilities. The Wylder is the generic Dark Souls melee class but with an added grappling hook that allows for massive mobility. The Guardian is an incredibly cool-looking bird man who specializes in defense and parries, and he can launch himself into the air for a super-powered attack. The Duchess is for the Bloodborne players; she has a variety of vast dodges and the ability to duplicate damage an enemy has recently taken. My favorite was the Recluse, a magic-using class that can absorb elemental damage an enemy (or ally) has recently taken to fuel different spells. There are going to be at least four more classes in the full version of the game, so there should be a lot of character variety.

You can't choose stats for these characters, but that's balanced by the fact that you now have a relatively massive amount of options when it comes to weapons. You can carry multiple weapons without equipment load (you're always fast rolling), and you can use pretty much any weapon. The game seems to reward you for sticking with your character's class fantasy, such as a Recluse sticking with magic spells, but you can easily bring along a weapon. Equipment has built in ashes of war and skills, so the item you pick is very important because it determines your basic attacks and special skills. In true roguelike fashion, you'll lose everything at the end of a game, but you'll unlock relics that can be equipped to provide permanent bonuses to your characters.

The basic flow of the game is interesting. It's basically an Elden Ring speed run. Instead of the slower and more methodical gameplay I tend to associate with the game, it is entirely about raw optimization of time. Is it worth going into that cave, knowing I might get bogged down in fighting generic mooks? Is it worth going after a giant hippo boss instead of fighting something easier? Is it worth taking a risk, knowing that I could lose my runes? It lends itself to a very different approach to the gameplay than I'm used to.

I imagine some of this will be simplified by gradual knowledge of the map, bosses and spawn locations, but it's difficult to say from the network test exactly how much variety there will be in the final game. During the network test, it seemed like a lot of spawns and loot tended to be in pretty much the same locations, but I imagine that would rapidly lead to people planning out very specific routes. I hope for more randomization in the final version of the game to avoid things becoming too static.

We did see some randomization in the current build. We ran into a couple of delightfully devilish events that seemed to be random. In one, we were invaded by a surprise boss who came out of nowhere in the middle of a fight to turn a bad situation into a terrible situation. In another, a void in the sky began to rain down killer ants, forcing us to either run away from our hard-earned treasure or attempt to take down the swarm. They're pretty cool events, and if there are more events in the final version, it might help to keep things interesting.

Elden Ring: Nightreign has a lot of potential. The combination of familiar elements with a new, faster and more arcade-y style of gameplay has the possibility of finding a niche that no other game on the market does. It may not be right for every Elden Ring player, but it's very easy to see it finding an audience among Souls players who thought Elden Ring's larger map and more sedate pace were too slow. I really adored the changes to mobility and the variety in character classes that made them feel more distinct. I'm looking forward to seeing a lot more from Nightreign before it releases in May 2025.