Netflix announces Rebel Moon: Blood Line, a surprisingly fun mobile spin-off game

The world of Rebel Moon is going to get a little bigger. Not with another movie just nowUnfortunately, but with a new mobile game from Netflix Games. The new game is called Rebel Moon: Bloodlineand while Netflix announced over a year ago that the game was in developmentIt wasn’t until Thursday’s Geeked Week presentation that we got our first look at the team-based action game.

Netflix’s Geeked Week presentation showed off a small snippet of gameplay from Bloodlinealong with a few words from the developers at Super Evil Megacorp. The trailer also showed off some footage, including the top-down shooting that makes up the bulk of the gameplay loop.

Ahead of the Netflix event, Polygon had the chance to interview some of Rebel Moon: Bloodlineand talk to the developers about what it was like tackling a video game project set in this original sci-fi world.

The game is set in the Rebel Moon universe, but largely separate from the plot of Zack Snyder’s films. The idea for the game came shortly after development of the film, the team says, when Snyder and his crew handed off scripts and other world-building materials to Super Evil Megacorp and let the team run with their ideas for how to expand the world. The track they settled on involved diving into a new slice of the universe and expanding on some of the factions of the Empire and Rebellion that we briefly see in the films but don’t get much background on. The game takes place on a planet called Krypt, where you’ll help the Rebel faction fight back against the overwhelming might of the Empire.

While its status as a mobile game tied into a successful film franchise can still come with some baggage, Rebel Moon: Bloodline‘s gameplay is surprisingly deep and fun. Similar to other short mission style games like Hell divers (which the team saw as a clear inspiration) the game starts with players (up to four in a team) in the Rebels’ home base. There you can run around and craft your gear, change your appearance, learn some details about the story and the Rebel Moon universe or select missions.

The missions we played were quick, small-scale skirmishes that lasted about 5-15 minutes each. They were fast-paced and tasked us with completing a variety of unique objectives while wave after wave of enemies attacked us from all sides. While the easiest level we played didn’t feel too hard, cranking up the difficulty increased the enemy count until it became somewhat of a challenge (and a lot more fun). This was all made considerably better by the game’s unique classes.

The game can be played single-player, but with a full squad is where it really shines, especially when each of you takes on a different class. The game features four unique classes, but it’s easier to think of them in the traditional roles they might occupy in other games: Bannerguard is the tank, Evoker is the healer, Kindred is the bow-wielding ranged DPS, and Forsaken is the stealthy quick melee DPS option. Each class has a variety of unique abilities that play well together, including crowd control for the Kindred, a taunt for the Bannerguard, and a pair of high-damage and quick repositioning abilities for the Forsaken. It’s easy to see how the higher difficulties could really let these abilities shine – for example, making it even more important for the Bannerguard to grab aggro from the many enemies on-screen and gain heals from the Evoker – allowing the rest of the squad to dish out damage without worrying about taking damage.

Each of these classes also has a massive litany of upgrades that you can earn, either through in-game currency you earn from quests or by leveling up each individual class. These upgrades looked interesting and seem to be Super Evil Megacorp’s primary incentive for people to stick with the game, but in our brief demo we didn’t have a chance to really dive into the specifics or learn how much they actually change the core gameplay.

Another thing we didn’t really get a good sense of in the demo was how deeply this game delves into the larger world of Rebel Moon. While the original release versions of the film don’t do a great job of showcasing it, the director’s cuts revealed that the world of Rebel Moon (best described as a mashup of Warhammer 40K and Star Wars) is a fascinating one, and filled with weird, cool-as-hell lore. An action RPG like Rebel Moon: Bloodline seems like the perfect place to show off all the cool details of this world, but in the bit of gameplay we saw, they were hard to notice.

Super Evil Megacorp made it clear that the game was still in alpha at this point, with the classes and gameplay mostly set in stone. That felt great. Of course, only time will tell how sticky the game will prove to be with players, or whether the mobile platform will hold it back as the levels get tougher, but for now it seems to be off to a promising start – and either way, it could be a great holdover until the conclusion of the film trilogy arrives.

Rebel Moon: Bloodline doesn’t have a release date yet, but there will be a beta coming soon. When the game is released, anyone with a Netflix subscription and a supported device will be able to download and play the game.