In 1999, we made an arena shooter with the heart of an RPG and a very simple ambition: get our friends together and cause absolute chaos. We called it Avalon Arena. Now, we’ve picked the project up again. And we’re getting seriously excited about where it’s going.
The original grew out of our LAN parties: computers, cables, friends, and games that carried on into the small hours. We wanted a multiplayer party game of our own, so we built one using characters from Avalon. Mines, machine guns and fireballs soon made those familiar RPG faces rather less friendly.
It was a gloriously chaotic mix. Arenas switched between top-down and side-on action, teleporters could turn a fight around, and somebody always wanted another round. Jeroen put the first version together in less than three weeks. You can read more about those early days in his story about the original Avalon Arena.
That’s the spark we’re bringing back: the charm of Avalon’s characters, the immediacy of an arena shooter, and the pleasure of outplaying your friends. Development is under way again, and seeing these characters running, jumping and opening fire all over again has been a blast.
We’re only just getting started with this new chapter, but we already have that familiar feeling: we’re making something we can’t wait to play together. Expect RPG charm, ridiculous firefights and plenty of reasons to demand a rematch.
Avalon Arena is back. This is going to be a lot of fun.