Ratloop Games Canada is looking to shake things up in the arena shooter landscape with their upcoming title, Lemnis Gate. A play on the official term for the infinity symbol, lemniscate, Lemnis Gate drops two to four players into an arena and forces them to adapt or die. The big hook of Lemnis Gate is the 25-second time loop that the players fight in, taking turns placing one of their agents and acting out their actions before the next player takes their turn doing the same. This back-and-forth lasts five turns if you are playing 1v1 or three turns in the 2v2 modes.

Each new turn you take, a new character will run through the set of actions that you take during the turn you spawn them. Will you set up an ambush, fix a mistake you made, or save one of your slain characters? Altering the timeline makes for an ever-changing situation that rewards quick reactive decisions, making for what looks to be a unique and exciting experience.

Lemnis Gate is approaching their characters more from a class-based Team Fortress 2 perspective, with each class coming with a unique loadout of weapons and tools to use, as opposed to special abilities found in games like Overwatch or Valorant. While Ratloop hasn't detailed the full range of classes that players can use, they did confirm that they will be launching with seven classes to pick from and that fans can expect mainstays like a sniper or assault-style class to be present. Each character class, once they are used in a round, cannot be used again, meaning you won't be able to have a full squad of snipers out there, and in the 2v2 encounters, teams share the same pool of classes available.

When the game launches, players will be instantly able to jump in to either casual or ranked modes and four possible game modes, including Capture the Flag. All the game modes will be playable in either ranked or casual modes and in either 1v1 or 2v2 matches. In terms of the pricing, Lemnis Gate will be a premium paid product and not free to play, but the developers, when asked her hush on whether or not there would be any type of microtransactions included.

Lemnis Gate will be launching on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC in early 2021, with the Ratloop Games saying that they are looking into the option for crossplay. I'm anxious to get my hands on and try out Lemnis Gate and with its heavier turn-based strategic focus. Hopefully, with the likes of casual and ranked modes out of the gate, it will be able to grow some legs and find its place in the rather cluttered landscape of shooters.