Seven authorable instanced match modes, from deathmatch to siege.
Arena Modes
Arena modes are authorable match rulesets built on top of instancing. You mark a map as an arena, answer a short wizard in plain language, place what the mode needs by clicking the map, and players get a real match with a scoreboard and prizes.
Matches are fully instanced: nothing you earn inside carries back to the persistent world except the rewards you authored. No gear loss, no farmable world XP or loot.
The Seven Modes
| Mode | How it plays |
|---|---|
| Free-for-All | Everyone for themselves; first to the kill target — or the highest score at time-out — wins |
| Team Deathmatch | Two or more teams race their combined kill total to the target |
| Capture the Flag | Take the enemy flag home while your own flag is at base; it drops on death and returns on touch or timeout |
| Control | Stand in painted capture zones to flip them; owned zones tick points per second |
| Battle Royale | Solo, duo or squad; loot chests spawn at the start and a shrinking safe ring punishes stragglers — last alive wins |
| Siege | MOBA-style lanes of creep waves march on the enemy base; towers must fall in order before the core can be destroyed |
| Horde | Waves of authored monster parties. Co-op: survive the wave count (or go endless for a high score), reviving fallen teammates between waves. Versus: two teams race the same waves for points |
Authoring
The arena wizard is written for people who have never built a game mode:
1. Pick the mode — plain-language descriptions, not jargon 2. Answer the questions the mode asks — team count, score target, time limit, wave count, ring timing 3. Place what the mode needs by clicking the map — team spawns, flag stands, capture zones, monster gates, lanes, towers, the core 4. Work the readiness checklist — it tells you exactly what's still missing before the arena can go live 5. Set the prizes — XP, items, silver or gold, for winners and for participation
Every reference is picked by name from your authored content — never typed as an id. "Ways to win" read as sentences you can combine with and / or, so "first to 30 kills or highest score after 10 minutes" is something you assemble, not script. Placed arena markers and lane polylines draw directly on the editor map.
What towers and cores look like
Towers, barracks and cores are all the same thing under the hood — a structure — and a structure is spawned as a stationary monster. That's what makes it targetable and destructible, so its look comes from the monster you point it at:
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Looks & fights like | The monster definition the structure spawns as. Its sprite is the structure's default appearance, and its abilities are what the structure fights with. Required — a structure without one is blocked by the checklist |
| Role | Tower, Barracks or Core. Behaviour only, not looks — picking Core makes destroying it win the match for the other side |
| Toughness | Weak / Normal / Fortress, overriding the monster's own HP |
| Graphic | Optional. Draws the structure as one of your map objects (a tower, obelisk, crystal) instead of the monster's sprite. Leave it empty to use the monster's sprite |
| Tint | Optional colour wash over whichever graphic is used |
Graphic and Tint are what let a single authored tower monster serve every team — tint it per team instead of cloning the monster definition. Combat is untouched either way: it's still the same monster, so targeting, damage, death and the "destroying it wins" condition all behave identically.
The editor's on-map markers stay schematic (team-tinted markers), so you'll see the real tower art in a playtest rather than in the editor.
Match flow
- Queue or walk in — the arena browser panel, an authored portal, an NPC, or an event command
- Warmup lobby — teams spawn behind a barrier, rosters show on the scoreboard, and a countdown runs
- Gear — players bring their own, or an authored loadout kit equips everyone identically for fair play
- Practice bots — fill empty slots with player-like NPCs that wear real equipment, score on the board, and count toward win conditions, so a solo creator can still test a real match
Starting a match short-handed
A team arena normally wants two full teams before the matchmaker will form anything — with the default team size of 4 that's 8 players, which is why a solo creator used to wait forever with nothing happening.
Pick a Practice bots count in the Instances panel before you hit Enter or Join Queue and the match starts with just you: the bots you asked for count toward the roster, so one real player is enough. The stepper reads (per team) for team modes and (total) for free-for-all, Battle Royale and Horde.
You don't have to author anything for this — a bot count chosen here works even on an arena where you never enabled bots, and it overrides the authored per-team count when you did. The bots still take their look, level and gear from the arena's authored bot settings when those exist.
Leave it at 0 to queue normally and wait for real players.
Practice matches don't pay out
A match that pays prizes has to be contested by real people, or an arena you can start alone against bots becomes an unlimited source of whatever you authored as rewards. So no prizes are granted when:
- any practice bots took part, or
- no other real player was there
Horde is the exception. A bot-free Horde run pays out solo, because Horde is authored co-op content that's meant to be beatable alone. Add bots to a Horde run and it stops paying, like any other practice match.
In Game
Players get a live score bar, objective callouts, a kill feed, a Tab scoreboard, and a victory screen listing exactly what they earned. All of it follows your HUD theme.
> Licensing: building arenas requires a Studio or Enterprise license. Viewing arena content stays open on every tier (so existing arenas remain visible after a downgrade), and playing in one never requires a license of your own.
> Still landing: mid-match bot respawns, chest spawns in Battle Royale loot areas, and the free-build layer for Battle Royale and Horde. Also, only structures currently have an in-game graphic — flag stands, capture zones, team spawns, monster gates and lane waypoints are gameplay markers that players don't see directly (you'd dress those spots with ordinary map objects for now).