 PVP showcase. If you don't talk with Turtle Rocks lead game designer on Back for Blood, Brandon Yanez, to help piece it all together. Before we get there though, let's start off with the reveal of a brand new PVP trailer and see what it's like in action. P-Mode swarm. To hear more about it and to take a deep dive into the gameplay and then the Rocks lead game designer on Back for Blood, Brandon Yanez. Brandon, can you tell us a little bit about the inspiration of this new PVP mode and what makes it fun and unique? Of course. So just like our previous titles, we really enjoy bringing new ideas to the table while retaining the spirit of the genre that we're working in. So Back for Blood's PVP is heavily inspired by our previous titles that makes survival, fast action, massive monsters, and a touch of horror. So our goal is to make a balanced and fun PVP mode with just as much replayability as the main campaign. So what's the structure of the PVP like? Do you play in rounds? Can you play as both cleaners and ridden in one match or are we swapping between the two? Yeah, so it's played as a best of three match. Teams of four take turns swapping between the ridden and cleaner players. The job of the cleaners is to scavenge supplies, find a good place on the map to fortify the position and try to last as long as they can. The ridden's main objective is to kill the cleaners as fast as they can. So this is achieved by choosing the right ridden to counter the other team strategy, using mutation upgrades, and by coordinating attacks with other AIs and players. As the round progresses, the swarm moves in. So this increases the size of the ridden of attacks and shrinks the playable space, sometimes forcing the cleaners out of their favorite positions, right? So when a cleaner team is wiped from the field, the points are scored for how long they survive. Then both teams swap and then they go at it from the other side. The team that runs the clock the longest as the cleaners is the winner. Now I understand you can play as all the different cleaners in both co-op and PVP. Do you have a favorite character that you play as? So I have a couple. I play mom a lot. She's a badass with sawed-off shotgun. She adds a lot of survivability to the team. She can also instantly help teammates that have fallen during battle. All of our cleaners have special perks, so that one is hers. Let's jump into another trailer that goes a little more in-depth on the ridden's progression through PVP. Check it out. We just saw that each different ridden is on each variant. So can you expand a little more on these special abilities and how they work? Sure. So at the start of each round, players can choose between nine playable ridden, each with their own unique abilities. So for example, the stalker can pounce a player and pull them away from their team or an exploder can time their detonation in the middle of a group of cleaners and fling them all in separate directions. Now knowing that each ridden has these different abilities, how do they change and improve throughout a match and improve the ridden's chance of winning? So as the ridden battle against the cleaners, they gain points. They can spend these points on team-wide upgrades called mutations. Mutations upgrade and improve a lot of different things on the ridden's side, formatting effects to their abilities. They might buff the common AI waves and size and strength. So the really cool thing is so they affect the whole team and they persist between rounds. So as a ridden team starts to coordinate their upgrades, things can get pretty wild. What are some strategies that the ridden team can take on in order to get a leg up on the competition? If the cleaners are really sticking together, you can swap to the wretch and vomit on their location. That's going to cause them to spread out, right? This is going to open up a whole bunch of opportunities for your other ridden players to attack, right? So if you get them to spread out and they're stalking nearby, stalker use the chaos to grab one of the cleaners and drag them off into the swarm. The wretch's vomit also slows their victims. So if a tall boy who's naturally pretty slow can attack one of those slow characters, they're going to really be able to pump them. Another good one is if a exploder waits for a cleaner to go revive their friend, they can use that as an opportunity to charge in and detonate on them, sending them flying and doing a massive amount of damage. Sounds pretty brutal. So with that being said, which is your favorite ridden to play out? That has to be the tall boy. It's pretty easy to pick up and play and have a lot of fun hitting cleaners across the map. Speaking of fun, let's talk about weapons. Now, throughout the trailers, you can see a number of different weapons. Can you go a little deeper into what those weapons are and how they work? So we really wanted to expand on the amount of choices the player had in Back for Blood with their weapon. So of course, there's handguns, shotguns, LMGs, SMGs, sniper rifles, and a whole bunch of other types of weapons, each with sort of like a unique character feel to them. Now, how deep does this weapon customization go? I really want to know what are some of the different attachments and options and how do they change the gameplay overall? Absolutely. So there's a lot of different customization options for your weapons. So throughout the world, you can find scopes, silencers, stocks, sights, all that good stuff. You can mix and match them. So there's a ton of options. Last question. Do you have a favorite type of weapon? Absolutely. So as I said earlier, I really enjoy playing mom. So her shotgun is definitely at the top of my list. That's a solid choice. All right, we've learned a little bit about how it all works, the cleaners, the ridden, the mutations, as well as how the customization works for the weapons. Thank you so much for joining me, Brandon, and for giving us a little bit more detail on Back for Blood's new PvP mode swarm. Thanks for having me. I can't wait for everyone to get their hands on this game. We're all really excited. I can't wait either. The good news is that you guys won't have to wait too long. There's an open beta coming up on August 12th with an early access portion on August 5th available to those who preorder. That's all for today. But Back for Blood still has a lot more to reveal in the coming months. So stay tuned.