Dave The Diver studio's next game is a team-based PvP arena battler

Dave The Diver was one of last year's surprise hits, but though some called it an indie game, it was actually the work of Mintrocket, a subsidiary of Korean publisher Nexon. Now Mintrocket have announced their next game and it seems less likely to cause such confusion. It's called Wakerunners, and it's a team-based "battle action game" about heroes smashing at each other.

It'll have a demo in Steam Next Fest next month and there's a teaser trailer below.

Wakerunners takes place on a dystopian sci-fi future Earth, in which surviving factions - split into 4v4 and 5v5 teams - do topdown battle. Characters all have "unique abilities, personas, and battle styles", and there's a "unique acceleration and deceleration mechanic" that allows characters to glide at high speeds, according to a press release.

There's no 2D pixel art so no one is going to forget what "independent" means upon sight of Wakerunners, but I suppose there's a nearly equally old discussion to be had: is this a MOBA? "Team battle action game", as the press release calls it, comes close, though there's no suggestion the arenas feature the lanes, creeps and towers associated with the genre. Perhaps that moves it more into Battlerite territory, which would be no bad thing.

One interesting detail is that Wakerunners lets you swap characters in the middle of battle, depending on what the fight requires in that moment.

Wakerunners was previously known as "Project TB", and listed as such on the Mintrocket site alongside Dave The Diver and the also in-development zombie stealth survival game Nakwon: Last Paradise.