Ubisoft (Re)announces BattleCore Arena, A Free-To-Play Sphere Shooter

BattleCore Arena, the free-to-play arena-based shooter released back in 2017 by Cosmic Ray Studio, has just been re-announced. The game is now under development at Ubisoft Bordeaux, coming to PC via Steam and Ubisoft Connect. Even though there's no release window as of yet, you can sign up for a tech test, running from February 1st to February 5th.

If you were one of the people who played the original, great news: The original concept remains pretty much untouched. In BattleCore Arena, you take control of a core--a sphere-shaped character--as you roll and bounce around in competitive multiplayer matches. The focus is on physics-based movement; think of it as if you're controlling the ball from Rocket League, but without cars.

As a PVP game, you can make use of ranged weapons alongside perks, which can help with knocking out enemies or helping your teammates. In the announcement post, Ubisoft says there'll be three multiplayer modes: Backup, a classic 3v3 team deathmatch, Golden Core, in which you need to hold onto the "eponymous Core" to achieve victory, and Free-for-all, which also has ranked matches. You can also customize your sphere--sorry, your core--with cosmetic items, including armor, lights, banners, elimination explosions, and more.

BattleCore Arena was originally developed by Cosmic Ray Studio, and released on October 4th, 2017. On Steam, the game had new updates involving technical and gameplay changes up until May 17th, 2019. The official account on X (formerly known as Twitter) remained fairly active until early 2019, sharing clips of animations in development as well as an upgrade to Unreal Engine 4.21.2.

The last post was made on February 7th, 2020, before the new announcement led to a new pinned tweet earlier today. It's unclear if Ubisoft acquired Cosmic Ray Studio, as there's no mention of such an acquisition in the announcement posts.