Hanako – Soul of the Samurai drops you into 16th century feudal Japan as a samurai in order to fight across four different multiplayer campaigns.

There are also four classes to choose from, including the blade wielding Kenshi and Naginata Samurai, the Samurai Archer, and the deceptive Ninja. Obviously, whichever class you choose affects your play style, and you’ll want to try to complement your skills with the classes that your fellow players pick. It helps that you can customize your samurai in their look and skills as you play through the game.

While the four campaigns have different objectives and strategies for you to try out, the overall goal is to either preserve the peace and honor of the Emperor, or to go rogue and focus your efforts in bringing chaos and death to Japan. You do this by choosing to side on the Hanako or Yamai side.

It seems that the campaigns consist of multiple game modes. One of which is a Battle Mode. This is a 16v16 team deathmatch, essentially. Teams have tickets that are spent with every respawn, and so the team that runs out of tickets first is the loser. Modes like this take place across large maps that should allow each class an equal chance against each other.

If you want to see the game in action then the livestreamed demo above gives a decent insight. However, do bear in mind that all of the footage is pre-alpha and so it will improve over time.

Any more information about Hanako that you want may be found on its website.