Simplified Fighting Game Rising Thunder Enters Open Alpha

Rising Thunder, an approachable new fighting game designed to emphasise strategy and reading the opponent over execution, is now in the open alpha testing phase.

To gain access to the in-development PC game, sign up here. The website reminds that "Rising Thunder is currently in the Alpha phase of development," which means the development team is "still rapidly improving the game, adding new content and optimizing the game’s performance."

Rising Thunder was originally announced at EVO 2015, a yearly fighting game tournament held in Las Vegas, and is designed by Seth Killian, a fighting game luminary that has worked at Capcom and Sony Santa Monica.

Also working on Rising Thunder are Tom and Tony Cannon, who co-founded the EVO fighting game tournament. The duo also created Good Game Peace Out (GGPO), middleware that became popular for providing near lagless online gameplay for arcade titles. The technology has been used in numerous fighting games, including DiveKick, Street Fighter 3: Third Strike Online Edition, and Marvel Vs. Capcom Origins.

At the heart of Rising Thunder is a control scheme that throws out complex motions for single-button special moves, thus allowing players to focus on strategy over perfectly-timed button presses.

The online-only game will be launched with a free-to-play business model. Cosmetic upgrades for its cast of robot fighters will be available to purchase but, importantly, these do not impact the balance of the game.

GameSpot interviewed Killian to discuss how and why his team are building an easy-to-play fighting game experience. Read the full Rising Thunder interview here.