Exterminauts Closed Beta Runs on PC Through November 18

The shift clock is running. Exterminauts, a third-person co-op PvE shooter from Behaviour Interactive, opened its PC closed beta on November 12 at 6 p.m. Pacific, and the test runs through November 18 at 6 p.m. Pacific. Players can sign up on the game's Steam page for a chance to join, and a new gameplay trailer arrived with the beta. The game is published by Level Infinite, Tencent's global games brand, in partnership with TEAM SHOOTER & CREATIVE.

The premise is a job, not a war. Players are blue-collar galactic field technicians who deploy from an orbiting base into hazardous off-world worksites overrun by alien infestations. Each completed work order pays out resources that improve equipment and upgrade tools, and each contract brings tougher obstacles. It's pest control with a progression system, and the work-order framing gives the co-op loop a reason to repeat: the next shift is harder than the last one.

The beta's contents are specific. It includes specialized power tools and an Overdrive mode that unleashes their full power, a range of tasks to tackle on each shift, a new map set on the planet Tian, and a fresh batch of alien pests with, in the studio's words, hidden surprises. Behaviour's VP and executive producer Louis-Pierre Pharand called the closed beta an exciting milestone that brings in new recruits to experience the game's galactic pest control firsthand.

Behaviour is selling the beta in person, too. The studio took Exterminauts to TwitchCon at the San Diego Convention Center from November 13, with a booth where creators and media could play hands-on and a merch store with exclusive goods. On Saturday, November 14, it hosted a LAN party for up to 90 participants, with three-player crews competing in livestreamed PvE challenges — the game's three-player crew format, played in a room, in front of an audience.

Behaviour Interactive's name carries a specific weight in this genre. The studio is best known for Dead by Daylight, the long-running asymmetric horror game, and Exterminauts moves it from one-versus-many horror to cooperative shooting with a workplace-comedy frame. The beta is the first broad test of whether that audience follows the studio into a brighter, funnier register.

What the beta doesn't settle is the launch. Exterminauts has wishlist pages on Steam, PlayStation, Xbox and the Epic Games Store, but no release date and no price have been announced. The test closes November 18, and the next facts worth having — a date, a price, and how the beta's servers held up — arrive after it does.