Story Highlights

• Tower overhaul: Choose difficulty before each run - Brave (5 floors), Heroic (15 floors), or Legendary (long but finite). No more endless, punishing climb.
• Hero kits reworked: Every hero now has Light Attack, Heavy Attack (charged by light), and a Skill. Deep upgrades unlock during runs - e.g., Archer fires homing arrows, Barbarian summons clones.
• What stays: Leaderboards, season shop, unlockable skins, voice chat.
• Beta date: Not yet announced, but developers say “it’s not too long now” - they’re more confident than ever.

Project R.I.S.E., the multiplayer action game backed by Supercell, has resurfaced after months of silence. The team cancelled its planned beta last November, admitting the game was “structurally not good enough.” Now they’ve torn things apart, rebuilt, and are ready to share what’s changed.

Why the Beta Was Cancelled

The original version had two main problems:

• Core loop was a disjointed mess - features meant to reduce matchmaking burden (lobby, camp, checkpoints) didn’t work. Players often lost teammates after one floor or got stranded alone.
• Hero progression streamlining backfired - in trying to deliver heroes faster, the core gameplay went backwards compared to pre-Alpha and Alpha tests.

The team calls last year’s direction a mistake. They’ve apologised and moved on.

New Tower Structure: Choose Your Difficulty

The biggest change: the Tower is no longer a single, massive, never-ending climb.

Before each run, you pick a path:

What this fixes:

• Predictable session length - you know exactly how much time you’re committing.
• Team stays together - matchmaking is based on chosen difficulty. No more losing teammates after one floor.
• Less punishing - you know how many floors stand between you and cashing out. No more getting kicked to near-zero.

Infinite Tower mode is still planned - but as a late-game challenge, not the core starter experience.

Hero Kits: Deeper Than Ever

In Alpha, upgrades were static - you chose before a climb and that was it. Last year’s attempt to pull functionality into Trinkets and Spells diluted hero identity. Now:

Base kit for every hero:

• Light Attack
• Heavy Attack (charged by using Light Attacks)
• Skill

The real depth: upgrades unlocked at the end of specific floor types. These upgrades fundamentally change how a hero plays.

Examples:

• Archer might unlock Empowered Light Attack after each Skill use → fires a volley of homing arrows.
• Valkyrie could throw her axe into the ground after her whirlwind spin → knocks down enemies.
• Barbarian can summon other Barbs to charge alongside him.

Your choices shape perk builds, creating varied decision paths every climb. As your hero levels up, their pool of upgrades and perks grows - opening new possibilities in future runs.

Tradeoff: Beta will launch with fewer heroes than originally planned.

“We won’t ship half-baked versions just to hit a number.”

The gameplay team has also improved aiming and controls - smoother, more responsive, even on poor network conditions.

What’s Still the Same

• Leaderboards - compete against friends and foes.
• Season shop - spend in-game currency.
• Unlockable hero skins.
• Voice chat.

What’s Next

• Beta test date: Not announced yet, but “it’s not too long now.”
• The team says they haven’t been this confident about R.I.S.E.’s direction in a long time.
• More screenshots and gameplay footage shared in the announcement.