Indus to Host Third Community Playtest on February 25: Details

Pune-based developer SuperGaming has announced the third community playtest for its upcoming indo-futuristic battle royale, Indus. The in-person event is scheduled for February 25 at the White Orange Software in Surat, Gujarat, and is open only to 50 lucky entrants. The portal opens at 1pm, so it is suggested you show up at least 30 minutes before. The news comes in the wake of Indus nearing one million pre-registrations on Android, in less than a month since it went live. As usual, selected participants can try out the latest build of the game first-hand and offer valuable feedback, which will be evaluated for tweaks before launch.

“To celebrate the community’s love and support for Indus, we felt that it’s time to take it to India’s fastest-growing city, Surat,” Roby John, co-founder and CEO, SuperGaming said in a prepared statement. “Our previous playtests had us get valuable feedback from players in Pune and Bengaluru which helped us make a better game, now it’s time to see what some of the more hardcore battle royale players in the country think.” The studio previously held a playtest at Comic-Con Bengaluru last year, albeit on a much larger scale with 250 players. Registration form for Indus’ Community Playtest 03 is live now, and you can sign up for it here. This time, the studio has partnered with Scarfall 2.0 — another made-in-India battle royale title, created by Surat-based XSquads Tech. So, this invite grants access to two separate playtests.

Since the second playtest, SuperGaming claims to have made several improvements to Indus, ranging from new skins, weapons, improvements to the map and mini-map, customisable controls, and a slide feature. The latest version also brings a ‘Weapon Testing Facility’ into play, which lets you test out random firearms before dropping into Virlok, the island map. For now, it is unclear as to whether this area will be accessible prior to a match, while you wait for the servers to get populated. A previous report suggested that much like other battle royale titles in the market, Indus will integrate bots/ AI enemies if it fails to populate servers in time.

In Indus, you step into the shoes of a Mythwalker, a hired mercenary working for the COVEN, an intergalactic syndicate, hoping to extract Cosmium — a rare natural resource that has a tangible effect on time and space. Players can expect familiar battle royale rules, where you’re dropped onto an island with other players, scavenge supplies, survive and kill to remain the last player standing. However, Indus incorporates some of its lore aspects as a means to keep the players moving. At a certain interval, the game will spawn the Cosmium at a random point on the map, which upon claiming grants the holder direct victory.

While the characters/ operators in Indus sport unique art designs, they don’t necessarily have special skills that separate them from each other — at least for now. The game will be playable in both first and third-person modes at launch, with the latter switching to an FPS perspective when aiming down sights. A skill-based matchmaking and ranking system are also planned, along with monetisation systems that are solely focused on cosmetic items. There is no word on a battle pass yet.

Pre-registration for Indus is now live on the Google Play Store. The Community Playtest 03 will be held on-site at White Orange Software in Surat, Gujarat, on February 25.