The fast-paced, arena-laden, sword-and-gore fighting game from Netker is set to graduate from Early Access starting August 26th. The developers sent out word that Versus has consistently been updated since entering into Early Access and that its official launch will usher in a new era of arena-based combat games.

originally Versus: Battle of the Gladiator made it onto Steam Greenlight where Netker sought votes and favorites from the Steam gaming community. After just a few days on the service they managed to get Greenlit to appear on the Steam store. They eventually made the necessary tweaks and launched into Early Access on June 20th two months ago.

The game got off to a rocky start during its early days on Early Access, but that’s the whole point of the pre-release phase; so developers can gather up feedback and make the necessary changes to the game ahead of release. Nekter took that feedback and tweaked, fixed, upgraded and smoothed out the gameplay for Versus. A trailer can be viewed below to see what the gameplay is like.

It reminds me of Dark Souls and Vindictus fused together. You can see that in the original Early Access trailer they had a lot of clipping issues, animation issues and hit detection problems. However, they’ve been updating the game vigorously since entering into Early Access and going all in with trying to fix and balance out the gameplay for both the single-player and online multiplayer.

Now if you were expecting more of a Conan: The Hyborian Adventures-style of sword action and gore, it’s not quite at that level. If you want a fast-paced, clash-and-bash, hack-and-slash kind of game then Versus appears to fulfill that role.

You can look for the game to exit Early Access on August 26th or learn more about the title by visiting the Steam store page.