Feline hero shooter Nyan Heroes is now open for its third playtest period, which adds a new game mode, two characters, and more gameplay features. This also marks the beginning of the project’s third airdrop campaign wave, where players will be able to earn Solana-based NYAN tokens by completing in-game quests.

Nyan Heroes is a free-to-play, Overwatch-style shooter in which players embody a cat piloting a mech suit. Developed by 9 Lives Interactive, the game broke into the top 30 titles on the Epic Games Store during its last playtest. This was followed by a token launch and airdrop to those who participated in the playtest campaign.

With the game’s third playtest, a new airdrop campaign has begun and will run until September 25. By completing weekly and daily missions, which will take place primarily within the game itself, players will be able to earn their share of NYAN tokens during the next airdrop. 

The third playtest sees major updates and new features added to the game—most notably, two new characters (or guardians) called Ayana and Yuri.

Anyana is a speedy scout cat pilot that gets ahead of combat, scoping out the enemy to help her teammates. One of her abilities increases the player’s movement speed, as she stuns enemies she passes through; her ultimate attack launches her from the sky, causing electric damage to the area around her.

Yuri, a mage guardian, was my favorite addition to the playtest. This character can cast spells, and best of all, teleport around the map. This mechanic was a lot of fun to play with as you could grab an SMG or shotgun, get behind the enemy, and catch them by surprise. 

This update also sees a new game mode added to rotation: Payload. Much like in hero shooters of the past, like Team Fortress 2 and Overwatch, two teams battle it out to push a payload across the map, with the team pushing it furthest winning out.

The addition of this game mode, the team says, is the first step in 9 Lives’ mission to balance the game to work across multiple different modes and styles.

Other new features have also been added in this playtest, including a new map, guardian audio lines, and an “embark” mechanic that sees cats that have disembarked from their mech hopping on the backs of ally suits.

Another major feature is the addition of customizable “augments,” which are equipable small stat boosts for your characters that you are randomly dropped while playing the game. The team admits that this will be a key challenge of balancing during this playtest, as they want this mechanic to feel noticeable without being unfair.

From playing the latest playtest, it feels more polished than back in May as the game appears to be taking shape while in this pre-alpha state. Namely, the wall running mechanic felt smoother in this build of the game, and I found myself wanting to experiment with it more than in the last playtest—although there was no official word on this being a tweaked mechanic.

For now, the team is focused on rolling out playtest three and wouldn’t estimate when the game will enter beta, let alone when it will be ready to fully launch. This is largely due to the game being created by what Arianne Garin, marketing manager at 9 Lives, called a “small team” of around 60 people, but the company is looking to hire in a number of roles to help push the game to the next level.

Edited by Andrew Hayward