While every game studio is desperately trying to make their own takes on the battle royale genre – huge 100 player battles – Fall Damage is going the other way. The Swedish studio’s debut game Batalj is designed for fierce 1v1 battles that are all about tactical planning and foreseeing your opponent’s moves.

It’s called Batalj as it’s Swedish for ‘combat’ and serves as a tribute to the Fall Damage team’s background in making triple-A games – in fact, it was founded by Markus Nyström, who is one of the four original founders of Battlefield developer DICE. It should be noted, however, that Batalj is not a first-person shooter. It’s a turn-based action strategy game but one that’s not like any others you may have played before.

Sure, you pick your squad of nine heroes from one of the three factions before you head into battle, similar to other games in the genre. But where Batalj deviates is by having you and your opponent take your turns simultaneously. You’ll both decide which units to move and what attacks to perform in the planning phase. Then, afterwards, you’ll both watch your moves play out at the same time, seeing who is the mastermind.

To win you’ll need to develop two skills in Batalj. The first is understanding how the game’s many units interact – their strengths and weaknesses. The second skill is being able to put that knowledge to use to foresee what your opponent might do – perhaps to counteract you, or to launch a full-on attack. It’s an enthralling mix of bravery and intelligence.

Batalj has been in development for a couple of years at this point and is now ready for beta testing. In fact, there’s a closed beta test going on right now and we want you to be part of it. As such, we have 10,000 beta keys that unlock the Batalj beta on Steam.

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You can grab one of the beta keys yourself by completing one of the actions in the widget below.

BATALJ beta giveaway



Once you’ve got your key all you have to do is redeem it on Steam by following these steps:

Launch the Steam Client and log into your account

Click on the GAMES MENU

Choose ‘activate a product’ on Steam

Follow the onscreen instructions to complete the process.

You should then be able to play the Batalj beta on Steam. If you need any help or want to be informed of any updates to Batalj then you’d be wise to follow the game’s Twitter account. Good luck!