Daedalic Entertainment is best known for point-and-click adventures, but earlier this year it announced that it's going to take a shot at the RTS genre with A Year of Rain. The game will feature a fairly standard-sounding setup of three distinct factions building bases, recruiting armies, and fighting over resources, but puts a focus on hero units and team-based competitive play with a 2v2 skirmish mode, leaderboards, replays, and a league system all planned for launch.
If you'd like to get a taste of what it's like before the launch later this year, signups for a closed beta are now being taken at beta.ayearofrain.com. A start time hasn't been announced but applicants will be admitted into the beta in waves when it goes live, and Daedalic clarified that there's no preorder offers guaranteeing admittance: If you want in, you sign up and hope for the best. (As far as I can tell, you can't preorder the game yet anyway.)
For those who prefer to watch, Daedalic is also holding a pre-release "Undead Champs" tournament, which is actually underway now. The tourney will conclude in a grand finale that will begin at 7 pm CEST (10 am PT/1 pm ET) on September 28, and will be livestreamed on Twitch. VODs of previous competitions will also be shared through the channel when they become available.
There will be a campaign in A Year of Rain: Daedalic hasn't gone into the details of that yet, saying only that will tell a "compelling multi-layered story," but it's "designed for a co-op experience" as well, so it'll be interesting to see how that works out. A website at ayearofrain.com is on the way but not quite ready yet (the beta signup page is working, though), so for now you can get the details on Steam.
