Grab your duo or four-person squad and drop into the fray against dozens of other players in this fun, frantic mashup of game genres.

Supervive wants to be the next game you sink 1,000 hours into. The MOBA-inspired battle royale game is taking a major step toward that goal this week when the game enters open beta on Steam. 

If you’ve played online player-versus-player games anytime recently, you’ve probably played games that have some similarities with it, but it’s unlikely that you’ve experienced anything quite like the unique gaming concoction that is Supervive. Here’s what you need to know before jumping in.

What is Supervive?

The wildly oversimplified version: Supervive is like the battle royale shooter Apex Legends with League of Legends mechanics and controls (as well as its top-down view). The fuller explanation is a bit of a game terminology soup. Supervive takes the basics of a multiplayer online battle arena like League or Dota — fighting creeps in the wild to level up your character abilities, gathering items to increase your stats — and funnels it into the context of a battle royale where you’re competing against other players to be the last squad standing on an ever-shrinking map. 

You can play Supervive solo or with friends in duos or four-person squads. Once you load into the game, your team will take turns selecting your characters, called hunters. Each hunter has unique abilities — like tossing out a weirdly stretchy arm that can pull enemies into your team or putting up a wall of ice to block off and push other players back.

Hunters fall into one of five categories — Fighter, Initiator, Frontliner, Protector, Controller — each designed to contribute to the game differently. A well-rounded squad will typically have hunters from three or four categories to give your team a diverse set of tools to work with. Once your squad has locked in, your squad leader chooses a drop point and you’re launched into the fray. 

Like Apex, or Fortnite and PUBG before it, Supervive introduces an encircling storm that gradually shrinks the playable area of the map, allowing teams to spread out and gather items in the early game but eventually funneling everyone into a circle of doom until only one squad is left. If you’re eliminated early, you’re free to queue up for another round and chase the fleeting glory of being the last ones standing.

There’s also a 4v4 arena mode where two teams battle it out in a series of deathmatch rounds, with victory going to the first team to win five rounds. Rounds are won by either eliminating the enemy team or controlling a base camp.

What’s the Supervive open beta release date?

The open beta for Supervive starts Wednesday, Nov. 20, and the developers have said the game will be up 24/7 “in perpetuity” after that. No limited play hours, no shutting down the game ahead of launch.

What makes Supervive different from other battle royales?

Most battle royale games are first- or third-person shooters, which means they rely heavily on aim skill, even if hero abilities and items add more of a teamplay element. However, Supervive uses a perspective angled from above like League of Legends and the Diablo games, forcing players to rely on a different set of skills than in first-person shooter games. Aim is still an element — especially if you’re battling over the abyss, where one hit instantly kills you — but it’s less essential to winning than it is in an FPS.

Other battle royale skills are transferable: Knowing which areas of the map offer a good early start and safely navigating as the storm shrinks will set you up for success. But by the end of a game, when the storm is barely the size of your screen and you’re facing off against a team that has comparable equipment, you’ll have to win by making plays with your hero’s abilities and coordinating them with the rest of your squad. 

Combat resembles League of Legends at a faster pace. For most hunters, fights will be determined by who gets better value out of their abilities, which are key to cutting through opponents’ armor and other defenses. Skirmishes are fast enough that you need to make quick decisions, but slow enough that you can make the call to retreat — tactically, of course, not because you’re scared of the flamethrower on the other side. Even with a relatively small starting roster of 16, Supervive’s hunters are diverse enough to cater to the aim gods as well as players who prefer more ability-focused characters. 

Like in Apex, if you or a teammate goes down, your squad can bring you back. Supervive features two ways to revive hunters: performing a “box rez” at the spot where the player died, or controlling a resurrection beacon for long enough, which can bring your entire squad back to life. 

Is Supervive free to play?

Yes, Supervive lets you play and unlock hunters for free, though you’ll do so over time. The game will sell cosmetics such as skins, emotes and profile icons. If you’re more of an instant-gratification type, you can spend money to buy a supporter pack, which will unlock all 16 hunters immediately, and the more expensive Superviver pack will also get you access to the next four hunters plus some additional cosmetics.