Summary
Chief Rebel’sFellowshipis a game that challenges groups of players to take on a series of dungeons within a rich fantasy world. Each dungeon is its own self-contained experience, typically taking between 10 and 30 minutes, with at least one boss fight along the way. And every one ofFellowship’sdungeons and bosses, from the very first one a player encounters to tricky late-game challenges, feels as epic and memorable as atraditional final dungeon and boss fight in an RPG.Fellowshipaccomplishes this through a combination of its character progression system, its thorough and detailed boss design, and its focus on crafting challenges that encourage parties to overcome them together.
Game Rant was able to both experience ahands-on preview ofFellowshipand speak with several Chief Rebel team members about the game: game director Axel Lindberg, design director Bretton Hamilton, and community director Hamish Bode. The team discussed how the titleFellowshiprepresented their core goal when designing the game: creating challenges that could only be overcome by a group of players effectively working together, each playing a unique but vital role in the battle.
Characters Can Unlock Epic-Level Abilities From The Start
One of Chief Rebel’s stated goals was to create the experience of a late-game dungeon without the hundreds of hours of grinding associated with MMORPGs and other similar titles. One way this is reflected is in the game’s characters. Most of the characters' abilities are unlocked from the start, with Ultimate Abilities available after completing one dungeon as that character. Ultimate Abilities live up to their name - aDPSreleases a scorching wall of fire that targets multiple enemies, while a healer links the health of all party members so they heal simultaneously. That way, players aren’t stuck using the same attack over and over again until they grind up to more powerful abilities.
New Content Can Be Added Quickly While Existing Content Is Adjustable
Design director Bretton Hamilton also explained that, becauseFellowship’sdesign is more compact than that of an expansiveopen-world RPG, they can add more heroes, dungeons, and content types such as Raids much more easily. They described the team’s approach to future content:
“Because we aren’t doing this big open world with 200 hours of questing, [we can put] out new heroes and new dungeons at a much higher cadence, allowing us to kind of shift the meta and keep things fresh. And when we see things starting to settle, with players having mastered the current set of dungeons, we can have something new out ready for it”
In addition,existing dungeons inFellowshipcan be customizedand made more difficult via the Curse and Ascension systems. A time limit can be added, both players and foes can be given the ability to interrupt each other’s spells, enemies can explode and deal damage upon death, and more. This allows players to challenge themselves and make each existing dungeon more difficult should they require it. With multiple Curses and Ascensions added, dungeons can truly feel like epic confrontations against bosses who can end the player’s journey if they do not rely on strategy and teamwork.
“I think that the nameFellowshipspeaks to exactly what we want to do,” Hamish Bode concluded. Axel Lindberg concurred: “There are few feelings as powerful as when you have to work together as a team to overcome a challenge.“Fellowshipcreates epic battles by emphasizing the necessity of teamwork between tank,healer, and DPS, giving players the ability to customize dungeon difficulty, and not gating character progression behind time-consuming grinding. PC players will be able to experienceFellowship’sepic final boss-like fights when the game launches into Closed Alpha on August 15 and fully in 2025 on PC.
