Haunted Space Arena, the core multiplayer game from developer Galaxy Lab’s flagship gaming IP and ecosystem, is officially opening up for a 4-day public alpha test on June 5 at 10 AM UTC.

How Does Haunted Space Arena’s Public Alpha Work?

From Thursday, June 5, 10 AM UTC, to Sunday, June 8, 10 PM UTC, Haunted Space Arena will be officially open for everyone to play for free in the form of a public alpha test. This will give the blockchain gaming community an early opportunity to try out the game on PC for free while competing for the top leaderboard spots.

There aren’t really any details on the features that we can expect to see included in this version of the PvP space shooter. There is however a gameplay trailer embedded in the official X announcement, and based on that, it seems that we will get to enjoy some action-packed space battles in the form of the classic Free for All game mode. It’s not quite clear how many players there are for each match, but it does seem that each one of them will last about 10 minutes, and the player that collects the most points from kills will win the match. There are different spaceships to choose from, each differing in stats such as health and shield points. Each ship seems to have a primary and secondary weapon, alongside a limited number of missiles. Battles take place in outer space amongst varied debris to fly your way through and possibly use as cover and as obstacles that can help you lose your attacker and possibly deliver a surprise laser blow.

Aside from gameplay features shown in the footage, the same announcement reveals that players will be able to compete for the top 10 leaderboard spots for a chance at gaining exclusive access to an upcoming KOL Tournament, which is said to feature “massive” prize pools.

This public playtest does not seem to have any token or NFT rewards, but if you end up ranking among the top 10 players on the final leaderboard of this test phase, then you will qualify for the KOL Tournament, where you might be able to play to earn some big rewards. Exact prize details or a timeframe for the KOL Tournament do not seem to be available at the time of writing.

What Is Haunted Space Arena?

Haunted Space Arena is a free to play online space shooter in development in Unreal Engine 5 for the Haunted Space gaming ecosystem. Players choose from a variety of different battleships and jump into various competitive game modes across a diverse range of beautiful maps.

While the public alpha release seems likely to only feature one game mode, the official launch looks set to have 4 different PvP modes to battle in: Free for All, Team Deathmatch, Collect the Orb, and Dominion.

Each of these modes seem set to be gradually added to the game and released to the public. After Free for All, the plan is to launch Team Deathmatch in Q2 or Q3 2025. No timeframe has been given for the other two modes. Collect the Orb will have teams essentially play Quidditch in space, chasing after a floating orb in space while evading enemy attacks in an attempt to score and win the match. More teamwork will also be needed in the Dominion mode, where teams will fight to capture and control bases across the map, holding them to drain the opponent team’s life points in order to secure victory.

As developer Galaxy Lab builds their ecosystem “layer by layer,” they will continue to add “a lot of game modes” in order to cater to various types of space gamers and sci-fi fans in general, based on info revealed in the game’s official documentation page.

According to a new roadmap, the public beta version of Haunted Space Arena is scheduled for Q3 2025. Eventually, the plan is to launch the game on Steam, Epic Games Store, PlayStation, and Xbox, while allowing players to have true asset ownership in the form of NFT battleships. These blockchain-powered ships will have a unique appearance and be tradable through an in-game marketplace. Last month, the game was officially listed on the PlayStation Store.

Next to this multiplayer-focused web3 title, the studio's gaming ecosystem also consists of a single-player game and a mobile mini-game on Telegram, the latter of which is live and has allowed gamers to play to airdrop during TGE season that kicked off last month. The month of May also saw Haunted Space launch an exclusive $100k+ UGC campaign ahead of TGE. While the $GAGA token was initially planned to launch on May 29, the TGE has been delayed to this June instead, with no exact date now available at the time of writing.