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It’s not often a strategy wargame is as eagerly awaited as Slitherine’s Broken Arrow, but the RTS battle sim has been one of the most wishlisted games on Steam for a lot of the year.
After some delays to its release date Slitherine and the developer, Steel Balalaika, have now unleashed a multiplayer open beta that you can jump in on via Steam. Let’s have a look at what we need to do to get access and once we do, how long we will have it for.
How to play the Broken Arrow beta
Okay so let’s have a look at the official instructions. The download size is around 30GB which is not inconsiderable so make sure you clear up enough space on your game drive before you get started.
- The Open Beta is only available through Steam. To download it, head to the Steam page for Broken Arrow.
- You will need to click on the green button which says REQUEST ACCESS.
- You will be given access automatically and “Broken Arrow Playtest” will appear in your Steam Library. Then, all you need to do is click Install and the download will start.
- Please note that you might be required to close and relaunch Steam in order for the download to begin.
Once Broken Arrow is installed you will be able to launch the game as normal from your Steam library.
When does the Broken Arrow beta test end?
Somewhat strangely there is currently no end date. Slitherine said in a blog post, “We don’t have a closing date for the Open Beta yet, but it will run for a few weeks. We’ll keep you posted on when we intend to close it.”
So with that in mind we could well still have another couple of weeks to get stuck in.
Slitherine also says that further updates to the game will be incoming as the beta progresses so there could be some more big downloads in the future, hopefully, they will be less than the original beta version but the devs did use the words “occasional sizeable downloads.” so we will have to wait and see.
