It’s been just over two years since Blizzard announced it Immortal Devil, an exclusive mobile entry to the legendary action RPG franchise, during BlizzCon 2018 for a less than enthusiastic audience. Although certainly that audience included people who simply hated the idea of a free game Devil for mobile (Ew! Mobile!), a lot of animosity is also due to a lot of people really wanted to announce Blizzard Devil IV but instead, they ended up with BlizzCon with the mobile-only device Immortal Devil announcement. Way to read the Blizzard Room! Just kidding, I love you.
Anyway, Blizzard definitely got the message across and quickly moved forward a year later to BlizzCon 2019 and it was all about Devil IV with an official revelation, game trailers and lots of information. They did not forget Immortal Devil although, while not exactly the main focus of the show, they released an updated game trailer and a blog post with lots of new details about the game, such as the fact that in the story it took place between Devil II i devil III. Here’s last year’s BlizzCon trailer, in case you need an update.
This brings us to today, a day in the world affected by a 2020 pandemic that saw this year’s BlizzCon personal event canceled and reborn as an exclusively online event called BlizzConline scheduled for next February . That means we haven’t had our normal annual dose of Blizzard news yet, but the team behind it. Immortal Devil has some great news to share as they are gearing up for the next big phase of their development, and today they have announced a time-limited alpha technical test for the game.
How it works? Well, first of all it is limited to Android and players only in Australia. Basically, anyone in Australia who has pre-registered for the game in the Google Play Store could receive an invitation and it will be sent to those who have pre-registered as long as their devices are ready. Sometimes it’s worth being in charge of these things. In a blog post describing this technical Alpha, Blizzard says they expect about a couple thousand people to come in for this particular testing period that should last about two weeks.
If you no enter the test group, which is basically the most everyone, Blizzard hopes to quench your thirst with a whole host of new information about Immortal Devil. It starts with a game overview block that details the game’s story, various modes, multiplayer and more. This leads to a second post on the blog that deals with Characters and Progression, where they break down character classes, the leveling system, and more. Next Blizard has a blog post about Itemization that details the workings of all items and loot Immortal Devil, without a doubt, the main essence of the whole series.
Finally, we all know that Immortal Devil will be free to play, but what exactly does that mean? Blizzard devotes an entire blog post to breaking down its approach and values regarding the monetization system. The most important aspects in this regard are: There is no energy system. You can play as long as you want. Besides, all of the game gear can only be acquired through the game, nothing will be sold as IAP. Like I said, loot is the essence of Devil therefore, it would be pretty crap if the best things were locked behind a pay wall.
One thing I’m sure everyone would love to know is the release date of Immortal Devil. Well, you don’t have any today, I’m sorry. Blizzard is famous for the high quality they set for their products and for their willingness to take the time it takes to reach that high bar. That said, I had a chance to play this version of Technical Alpha Immortal Devil a bit (and we should share more) and we can say that the core of the game feels incredibly polished and complete, but given the team’s ambitions about what they would like to do in terms of modes and content, I could still have a long way to go.
That’s just my way of saying I don’t know. It could be very close to being released, or it could be very far away. I think the best case scenario would be for this technical Alpha to be a final stress test for the game with the goal of launching it during BlizzConline in February, but that’s entirely speculation on my part. Either way, I think if it moved you or disappointed you when Immortal Devil It was originally announced, we will all love to have a small portion of Devil experience well entrenched in our pockets, ready to hack, hack and loot whenever and wherever we want.