Bloodline Champions was once a truly unique and amazing game. It featured a cast of characters perfectly balanced against each other, and with no randomness in any aspect of gameplay every match was decided purely through player skill and team coordination. Unfortunately, one of the post-launch updates brought with it the very antithesis of balance, a whole bunch of stat boosting items and effects that ended up utterly destroying the delicate counterplay between the various characters and eventually drove the majority of the playerbase away.

While Bloodline Champions might be well and truly dead now, the studio behind it has decided to create a spiritual successor based on what everyone has come to love about BLC, the intricate balance and completely controlled environment. The good news, if the recent gameplay trailer is any judge, is that they have managed to do so quite successfully because outside of upgraded visuals this is exactly the same as the BLC as I remember. Have a look:

Most excitingly, at least for me anyway, is that the majority of the Bloodline Champion heroes are appearing in Battlerite as well. I've probably spent 50 hours jumping around and poisoning people with the Ranid Assassin, so seeing him return (albeit in an even stranger form) is a bit like bumping into an old friend. The same goes for the Spearmaster, a hero I've never really played very much, but have always enjoying fighting given that his skillset is incredibly complex despite mostly revolving around stabbing people with a long stick.

If you would like to learn more or just sign up for beta test, you can do so over at the official website. When exactly the beta is going to start up, I'm afraid I don't know, but with the Early Access launch set for September 2016 I have a feeling its going to be fairly soon.