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Rising Thunder’s technical alpha is live; go kick some robots

Rising Thunder alpha

Rising Thunder is unlike the fighting games I’m used to. It wasn’t born in the arcades and doesn’t need you to hunt down a buddy to play against in the same room. It’s a F2P fighter that’s been designed – by the team that includes EVO founders Tom and Tony Cannon and Seth Killian – from the ground up for online battles. 

The technical alpha has now launched, and hundreds of players are already being herded into fighting arenas where they’ll duke it out, robot on robot. If you fancy taking it for a spin yourself, you can register here

On the first morning of EVO, I had a chat with Killian, where he spoke about what sets Rising Thunder apart, and why it’s being designed for a hardcore fighting audience, but might build a bridge between them and casual players.

“So what we wanted to do with this game is think about online from the ground up, from day zero,” he says. “That means constructing in such a way that every single new technique, new asset we put in the game, we test it against online. Every single part of the testing for this game – even when we’re just sitting on our machines and playing in training mode – is done online. We’re playing through servers in Oklahoma, we’re not like pretending there’s x amount of ping with some ‘ping injector’. We’re actually playing over thousands of miles, constantly, because we want to have the best possible online experience.”

Take a look at our Rising Thunder preview for the rest of the interview.