The Russian-based Battlestate Games Studio has announced the start of its technical Alpha testing of Escape from Tarkov, its hardcore online game. First players, those who have claimed their eligibility for participation by pre-ordering the game from the official website – have already been admitted into the game.

Further admittance of eligible players will be conducted in waves, every new wave being formed with one or two day intervals in chronological order: first players who pre-ordered the game, will also be the first to try it. The avant-garde of the Escape from Tarkov heroes will be welcomed by two already familiar raid locations “Factory” and “Customs”, and they’ll come across 15 types of weapons and a wide variety of equipment and supplies.

The main purpose of the technical Alpha testing is for the developers to fine-tune the basic mechanics over high loads, exploring the locations for possible issues, hunting for bugs that are likely to occur in the early stages of testing both in offline and online modes. Along with collecting player feedback, the developers will be optimizing the Escape from Tarkov Alpha version game performance, fixing the discovered issues and adding new content. At this point, the online game mode already includes the majority of essential features, including inventory management, trade, medical treatment, weapon modding and ballistics. Also, players will be able to check out the daylight and weather changes with impressive weather effects.

Escape from Tarkov is a hardcore story-driven MMO featuring elements of FPS and RPG. The events take place in the Russian city of Tarkov, which has been sealed of by roadblocks and sunk into the chaos of local warfare between private military companies. Escape from Tarkov’s Hazardous Environment Combat Simulator employs a number of custom system modules to create incredibly immersive gameplay and make players feel the reality of what is happening in the game.