Recently making ripples in the fighting games corner of the industry is Radiant Entertainment’s new Rising Thunder, a PC exclusive fighter that owes it’s promise to the rather famous team of veteran fighting game developers. On the roster are the likes of Seth Killian, known for his work on the Street Fighter series under Capcom, Tom Cannon, founder of the Evo Championship Series tournament event, and Tony Cannon, who worked developing the tech that most fighting game fans know as netcode and is the framework for online play. Needless to say, fans have been excited to see what the trio was capable of, and the game seems to live up to the hype in the eyes of many.

The only trailer footage available is provided by Gamespot, we claim no credit for it.

While the game has not yet officially released, it has been in the closed alpha stage of playtesting for a few months, meaning only randomly chosen applicants were allowed access to the game. When some may have thought they’d never get that “golden ticket” email, Radiant Entertainment stepped in to reignite the hype. As of August 10th, the alpha became open to the public, as first stated in a tweet.

Network test success! As a result, Rising Thunder Alpha is now open to all. Sign up at http://t.co/20AiuuvbbJ +play immediately–no waiting!

— Rising Thunder (@RisingThunder) August 10, 2015

Rising Thunder plays to many of the industry standards and leans upon its solid 2D one-on-one gameplay that fans of the genre are accustomed to. The game features a variety of robotic characters to choose from, and be sure, all the characters are indeed robots. While there is thus far no narrative context for any of the fighting, each character has their own unique attitude and personality that shines through via their voice and tone, the things they say, their general attitude, and even their posture or battle style. This means there is definitely a bit of room to piece together some sort of plot.

That being said, don’t hold out for one. Of the many focuses that make the game stand out among other similar titles is the very fact that it claims to be “built from the ground up for online play”. One of the common complaints about any fighting game’s online features is the inconsistency of service and the overall poor quality. Hundreds if not thousands of players cry out daily, complaining of lag, rubber-banding, reduced frame rates, and slow response times plaguing their online experience. Rising Thunder‘s design philosophy clearly prioritizes streamlining and smoothing out the bumps in this experience, and that’s been enough to draw fans on its own.

Anyone curious can head over to Rising Thunder‘s official site and start playing right now!