Fighting games have never been the most accessible genre in gaming. They’re input-heavy, require a lot of planning and learning, and hundreds of hours of practice are needed before achieving the skill necessary to play at an even slightly competitive level.
Step forward Rising Thunder, a new free-to-play game announced recently at EVO 2015. Rising Thunder has been designed with accessibility in mind, distilling complex controls into single button presses and focusing more on grand strategy and timing than the typical advanced inputs of other fighting games like Street Fighter and Guilty Gear XRD. And now, Radiant Entertainment has opened the game’s playable alpha to everyone!
Network test success! As a result, Rising Thunder Alpha is now open to all. Sign up at http://t.co/20AiuuvbbJ +play immediately-no waiting!
— Rising Thunder (@RisingThunder) August 10, 2024
Players interested in Rising Thunder can now register and download the game on the official Rising Thunder registration page, though as you might expect from a game still in the alpha stage of development, everything is still subject to rebalancing, optimizations, changes, and additions. And, of course, you’re bound to run into a bug or two.
For those unfamiliar, Rising Thunder is the brainchild of Seth Killian, former community manager for Capcom’s Street Fighter series. Street Fighter IV boss Seth is named after him, so now you know why the most infuriating boss in a fighting game ever created has a name that sounds like someone you’d meet in a bar. They should have called him Killian instead. Much more threatening.
Killian teamed with Tom and Tony Cannon, co-founders of famed fighting tournament organization EVO and now of Radiant Entertainment - a studio which they founded back in 2013. With an all-star cast like that on a fighting game, it’s no surprise that plenty of fighting fans are keeping a close eye on Rising Thunder as it progresses through development.
Rising Thunder doesn’t currently have a release date, though with the game still in alpha it’s likely that it won’t come out until 2016. Look out for our preview in the coming days. In the meantime, take a look at the game in action in the video below.
