All dungeon runs, all the time! Chief Rebel and Arc Games' Fellowship transforms the endgame dungeon runs of typical MMOs into a standalone multiplayer co-op adventure, making this aspect more accessible and condensed than ever before.
Fellowship makes no secret of the fact that it was inspired by World of Warcraft and other MMOs featuring group-based dungeon content. As a multiplayer online dungeon adventure (MODA) game, it incorporates elements from MMOs, MOBAs, and ARPGs, focusing exclusively on dungeon runs. These types of dungeon runs are usually only found in endgame content after players have spent countless hours levelling up.
It's all about groups of four players who team up cooperatively to battle adventures (short dungeons with trash mobs and only one boss) and longer dungeons with trash mobs and three bosses. Defeating a certain number of trash mobs is also necessary; otherwise, the path to the boss will remain locked. Players can only obtain loot in the form of equipment, currencies and crafting materials at the end, which is necessary for them to become stronger and tackle more difficult dungeons. The game is designed for team play and revolves around the 'holy trinity' of tank, healer and damage dealer.
In terms of classes, the game adheres to the standard fantasy formula (there is no option to customise the heroes) and incorporates familiar mechanics and play styles into the individual classes. Compared to other MMOs, much of the game feels sensibly 'streamlined'; while most classes have fewer than a dozen active abilities, these are meaningful and valuable rather than gathering dust unused in the spellbook. As the currencies are available across characters, it is easier to try out different classes. Loot is only available at the end of a run and many elements that would otherwise interrupt the flow of the game are absent. For instance, health and resources regenerate quickly outside combat, so healers don't need to drink to replenish their mana.
Fellowship; Chief Rebel & Arc Games
The most unique feature of Fellowship is the way it simplifies access to the dungeon experience, allowing players to complete 'endlessly scalable dungeons'. Rather than having to play for hours to unlock endgame dungeons, Fellowship players can tackle these right from the start. Although the fantasy world, enemies and atmosphere seem rather generic, the game isn't necessarily trying to tell a story; it's more about offering dungeon runs. Both newcomers and veterans can experience this type of content by choosing between Quickplay, which offers more casual, simple runs lasting 10–15 minutes where players' strength is balanced to a fairly high level, and Ranked Dungeons, which offer a more challenging experience involving curses, ascensions, and difficulty scaling, similar to Mythic+ Dungeons in World of Warcraft.
In ranked dungeons, it's important to know which trash mob groups to take down, which enemies in the groups are really dangerous and which attacks/spells are better to interrupt. On the subject of interrupting, Fellowship offers many helpful tools for coordinating team play. For example, players can lock onto enemies to signal to the group that they will interrupt abilities, and once they have done so, the cooldown period for the interrupt ability automatically appears to inform the other group members. Players can also mark enemies with symbols and place markers in the room to help with coordination. Damage and heal meters have also been built in. This shows that the developers have played many other MMOs with dungeon runs and have carefully considered which features are essential in such a game. However, certain convenient features are still lacking, such as a dungeon journal containing enemy and skill descriptions, more customisable scrolling combat text and additional UI features.
Although Quickplay sessions are short and easy, they are ideal for exploring the dungeons and obtaining basic equipment. After all, equipment is essential because character development mainly depends on it. This equipment can also be upgraded in several ways. Later on, there are upgradeable weapons with skill trees, set items and multi-level gems, but there is basically no character level, only equipment/item level and dungeon ranking (points earned for completing ranked runs) as central player power ratings.
Fellowship; Chief Rebel & Arc Games
The stronger the players become, the greater the challenges they can take on, and the better the loot they can obtain. Special dungeons must be completed to unlock the next difficulty level (Contender, Adept, Champion and Paragon). These 'Capstone Dungeons' are often significantly more difficult and time-consuming than normal adventures, and require the appropriate knowledge of the game and/or equipment to complete successfully. While at lower difficulty levels, the actions of the enemies and the dangerous spells were not so important, at higher levels, the battles become increasingly challenging. This is partly because the enemies gain more skills, and partly because the battles take significantly longer. It becomes increasingly important to know the abilities of the enemies and bosses, and to use this knowledge correctly. Then, the battles also become more dynamic, exciting, and challenging. The harder the difficulty level, the more modifiers you have to master to get better loot. Even if the group fails, all players get loot.
Ahead of the launch, Axel Lindberg, CEO and Game Director at Chief Rebel, said: "With the Early Access launch on 16 October just around the corner, the open beta is a huge milestone for us as it gives us the opportunity to gather one final round of feedback before Fellowship enters Early Access. Since announcing Fellowship in August 2024, we've been developing the game and playing it alongside our incredible community of players in private playtests, and we'll continue to do so as we head into Early Access and beyond."
Chief Rebel is an independent game studio based in Stockholm, Sweden. Established in 2018 by veterans of the video game industry who have worked on franchises such as World of Warcraft, Diablo, Helldivers, Battlefield, Tom Clancy's The Division and Just Cause, among others, the studio's first game is Fellowship. For this project, they were inspired by MMOs and the endgame dungeon experience. Recognising that MMOs often present numerous access hurdles to endgame dungeons, the team wanted to develop a game that would make these dungeons more accessible to all players. Combining a PvE MMO with easily accessible MMO-style endgame dungeons was the starting point for Chief Rebel in developing Fellowship.
Fellowship; Chief Rebel & Arc Games
Fellowship is published by Arc Games, a North American, European and Asian publisher of premium and live service games. Arc Games is renowned for the Remnant series, Hyper Light Breaker, Fellowship, Have a Nice Death, Frosthaven, the Torchlight series, Star Trek Online and Neverwinter. Originally founded in 2008 as the North American subsidiary of the Chinese publisher Perfect World Entertainment, Arc Games was acquired by Embracer in February 2022 as part of Gearbox Publishing. Following a restructuring of Perfect World Entertainment and Gearbox Publishing by Embracer in April 2024, the company was rebranded as Arc Games. The company is headquartered in Redwood City, California, and has additional offices in Amsterdam and Shanghai. Arc Games remains part of the Embracer Group, while Gearbox is now part of 2K Games.
Fellowship was launched on PC via Early Access on 16 October 2025, costing €24.50. There is also a Supporter Edition available for €58.99, which includes the Early Access version of the game along with three Supporter Packs, each of which grants three armour skins and one mount. The packs are also available individually for €19.50 each. Following the Early Access launch, optional cosmetic purchases will be made available. However, these items will be purely cosmetic and will not affect gameplay. Fellowship is expected to remain in Early Access for around six months, although this may change depending on community feedback. In addition to the quality-of-life features already mentioned, which the game could still benefit from, there are also content-related improvements that could be made, such as adding more classes, dungeons, enemies and boss fights. It would also be great if raids were introduced at some point.
The launch was quite successful for Arc Games, even though there were unsurprisingly server bottlenecks on release day. The problems were resolved relatively quickly. At its peak on 19 October, almost 44,000 users were online concurrently, and player numbers hardly declined at all in the following days, remaining at a constant level, which is unusual but indicative of sustained community engagement. Following Remnant II (2023), Torchlight II (2012) and Remnant: From the Ashes (2019), Fellowship has the fourth-highest concurrent user (CCU) peak on Steam for the publisher.
The demo and open beta hinted at the game's potential. Fellowship makes the fascination and experience of dungeon runs more accessible from the outset and packages them in bite-sized chunks, without neglecting progress and challenge. The next step is to expand and refine the experience further in terms of content, such as classes, dungeons, and encounters.
