4v4v4 tactical shooter Alara Prime announces early 2025 alpha playtest

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Players will go head to head to head in this class-based FPS early next year.

If you’ve ever thought Counter-Strike lacked cutthroat politics, you might want to keep an eye out for Alara Prime, the tactical 4v4v4 FPS entering closed alpha in early 2025.

In a new trailer shown at today’s PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted you’ll get a peek at the game’s setup, which sees three squads of four players take turns defending a capture point while the other two squads try to kill them and take control. The attackers can work together to knock a leading team off their high horse, or spend so much time backstabbing one another the defenders win by default.

Alara Prime - Showing the first person perspective of how Alara Prime handles, with 4v4v4 showdowns and class-based gunplay.

(Image credit: Fall Damage)

It’s a solid minute of gameplay footage showing various tricks from four classes: assault, infiltrator, support, and engineer. Riot shields, flashbangs, surveillance cameras, and holographic decoys are all fair game as each team snakes between corridors. While nothing seems astonishingly different to what you’ll find in Valorant or Counter-Strike 2, it’s got a delicious extra layer of paranoia knowing you’ll either be thoroughly outnumbered or uncertain who you can trust.

The cloaking device and wall-breaching charges shown in the trailer make it clear that devious tactics will help players turn around unfavorable odds—or just run the other two teams into each other. Beyond that it looks how you might expect, with plenty of the ol' aiming down sights and running up behind unsuspecting blokes for instant knife kills.

A sleek, spacey aesthetic and clear affection for neon green do a bit to differentiate Alara Prime visually from the big two in the tactical shooter subgenre, though it's clear developer Fall Damage is anticipating those comparisons if these posts on X are any indication. Players who receive an invite to the closed test will get a hands-on look at how the three-team antics shake out very soon, but regardless, you can wishlist the game on Steam.

Justin Wagner
Justin Wagner

Justin first became enamored with PC gaming when World of Warcraft and Neverwinter Nights 2 rewired his brain as a wide-eyed kid. As time has passed, he's amassed a hefty backlog of retro shooters, CRPGs, and janky '90s esoterica. Whether he's extolling the virtues of Shenmue or troubleshooting some fiddly old MMO, it's hard to get his mind off games with more ambition than scruples. When he's not at his keyboard, he's probably birdwatching or daydreaming about a glorious comeback for real-time with pause combat. Any day now...