Interview: How Mistfall Hunter Blends Soulslike Combat with Dark Fantasy RPG Extraction Mechanics

Mistfall Hunter brings the escalating risk and potential loss of an extraction game like Arc Raiders into a third-person dark fantasy action RPG in the same vein as Dark Souls. Instead of relying primarily on firearms and distant encounters, Bellring Games’ PvPvE experience surrounds players with melee classes, monsters, magic, valuable loot, and rival hunters competing to escape missions alive.

The unusual combination quickly attracted more than one million players across all platforms. It also presented the team with the interconnected challenges that accompany a live extraction game, including performance, matchmaking, onboarding, class balance, Solo Mode demand, and the difficulty of ensuring that PvE threats enrich competitive encounters without arbitrarily deciding them.

In this interview, Mistfall Hunter's Game Director, Hao Zhang, explains how it adapted extraction tension to close-range action combat and crafted a game with post-launch plans worth returning for. The game is out now with full cross-play on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC via Steam.

Mistfall Hunter blends dark fantasy ARPG combat with PvPvE extraction design. What was the original creative vision for the game, and how did the team decide that these two genres belonged together?

Game Director, Hao Zhang: We wanted to take the action-game expertise our team had built up over the years and apply it to a new kind of experience. In an extraction game, pressure builds steadily as you explore, then releases all at once when you successfully extract. We believed that combining that structure with action combat could lead to something new. Dark fantasy also gave us another way to make each match more tense. The goal was for combat, exploration, the risk of losing your loot, and the final extraction to all serve the same emotional arc. Our early demo tests quickly confirmed that this idea was viable.

Extraction games are usually associated with shooters, but Mistfall Hunter leans heavily into melee combat, class abilities, monsters, and RPG progression. What were the biggest design challenges in translating extraction tension into a third-person fantasy action game?

Hao Zhang: The biggest challenge was finding the right level of pressure within each match while creating meaningful mind games between players. Shooters have natural advantages here—engagements happen over longer distances, information carries more weight, and TTKs are shorter. Action games offered few proven examples to draw from, so we had to develop many of these solutions ourselves.

We used PvE to maintain a steady baseline of pressure, then designed tight, layered spaces to make close-range encounters between players tense and tactical. To give PvP more depth, we also reduced the reliance on traditional action-game lock-on and placed more emphasis on manual aiming and positioning, adding more variables to each battle. Another major challenge was balancing the interaction between PvE and PvP. A good duel should not be ruined by a random minor enemy, but valuable PvE encounters should never be completely safe. We continue to optimize that balance through AI behavior, aggro redirection, temporary lockdown zones, and feedback from testing.

Can you walk us through the art direction for Mistfall Hunter? What were the main visual pillars for Weavereach, the Corroded monsters, character classes, weapons, armor, relics, and the overall dark fantasy tone?

Hao Zhang: Three words define the visual direction—ruined, mysterious, and untamed. Weavereach is set among the apocalyptic ruins left by the fall of the gods. Its visual language draws from Norse mythology, using Gyldenmist, golden threads, and Gyldenblod to represent supernatural power, while the world itself remains cold, brutal, and tragic. The Corroded are designed to look as though Gyldening has overloaded their souls and stripped away their sanity, leaving them dangerous but still visibly marked by fragments of divinity.

Characters, weapons, and armor take inspiration from 10th- and 11th-century Nordic textiles, metalwork, and architecture, with those elements reimagined through a fantasy lens. Each class is distinguished by its silhouette, weapon proportions, materials, and stance. Effects remain low in saturation, tangible, and cinematic, creating spectacle without flooding the screen with light or compromising immersion and combat readability.

Enemy design seems especially important, since players need to read both PvE threats and rival players in chaotic encounters. How do you approach creature silhouettes, attack tells, animation timing, VFX, and audio cues so danger remains readable?

Hao Zhang: Combat readability always comes first; spectacle comes second. Enemies should be instantly readable from medium to long range, with clear, distinct silhouettes that communicate their size, threat level, and likely attacks. Attacks should also have clear wind-up, active, and recovery phases, with differences in speed and timing signaling whether they can be reacted to, interrupted, or should be treated as a major threat. We also keep tight control over the size, color, and brightness of VFX so they do not block the camera or obscure character movement.

For important attacks, we reinforce the visual cue with directional audio, distinct material sounds, and clear hit feedback. Where possible, PvE and PvP use the same basic "language of danger." At the same time, player skills, monster attacks, and environmental hazards still need to be easy to tell apart, so we distinguish them through color, timing, and sound. When information is too important to risk being missed, we add a stronger UI cue, but only where it does not undermine immersion. As the game continues to grow, keeping combat readable becomes more difficult, so we keep refining these systems based on live feedback.

Mistfall Hunter features multiple classes with different battlefield identities, including roles built around melee, ranged combat, stealth, magic, and support. How do the design and art teams work together to make each class feel distinct in both gameplay and presentation?

Hao Zhang: We start by giving each class a clear identity on the battlefield, then design and art work together to express that identity through its weapons, skills, silhouette, and animation timing. Design defines the class's emotional positioning, resource loop, value to the team, and counters and counterplay—while art makes those qualities immediately visible through body proportions, equipment, idle silhouettes, materials, and VFX.

Heavy melee classes, for example, emphasize weight, stability, and impact. Ranged and spellcasting classes emphasize space control and casting rhythm, while stealth classes rely on mobility and burst damage. Weapons and skill trees can support different playstyles, but no matter the build, players should be able to tell at a glance what they're facing and what it might do.

How do you design maps and extraction spaces that support solo players, co-op teams, PvE encounters, PvP ambushes, loot routes, and escape decisions without becoming too predictable?

Hao Zhang: Our goal is not to make the map completely random each match. We want players to learn the map while still facing new decisions every match. Landmarks, regional themes, and main routes remain consistent, giving players a reliable sense of direction. Spawn points, resource values, the way Gyldenmist advances, tasks, enemy states, and extraction rules and locations then change the route they take. High-value areas, bosses, and extraction points become risk hotspots that draw heavy player traffic, but players can go around them, set an ambush, loot quickly, or extract early.

To keep the map familiar without making it predictable, we keep its overall structure stable while randomizing different configurations of POIs, strategic positions, and enemy placement. Each system follows its own rules, and their combinations create different situations each match. Solo and Trio modes also feature fundamentally different in-match designs tailored to how each mode plays.

The game reached a large audience quickly after launch, but also entered the market with the challenges common to online extraction games: balance, onboarding, performance, and player feedback. What have you learned from the launch window so far?

Hao Zhang: The launch period showed us that balance, the learning curve for new players, performance, and matchmaking all affect one another. As the player base grows, a problem in one area can make the others worse. Strong demand for Solo Mode led us to speed up development, but a new mode also splits the matchmaking pool and creates new class-balance issues.

Reports of stuttering and latency also showed that stability needs to come before new content. We sort feedback by urgency and the number of players affected. Hotfixes address common problems that need a quick response, while full updates tackle systemic issues. We also explain our priorities, trade-offs, and progress. The key lesson is that a live game cannot simply react to every piece of feedback. We need to understand the player experience behind it, then verify the problem and our solution through data, testing, and community discussion.

What does your content pipeline look like for a live PvPvE game where new classes, arcana, zones, relics, and balance changes need to keep the hunt fresh over time?

Hao Zhang: Our content pipeline is built around keeping the core hunting loop fresh. Frequent updates focus on stability, tuning, loot, and class balance. Less frequent updates add events, in-match mechanics, and missions that change players' goals and decisions. Seasonal updates bring larger additions such as new classes, new playable areas, and new build systems. Before an idea enters production, we ask what player decision it is meant to change. It then goes through prototyping, cross-class and PvPvE testing, performance checks, player testing, and staged release.

After launch, we iterate using data and community feedback while keeping the option to roll back changes. We do not rely on story content alone for long-term engagement. Our priority is to enrich combat and the loot-fight-extract loop, while worldbuilding and narrative strengthen immersion and players' connection to the world.

For 80 Level’s audience of artists and developers, what has been the hardest part of building a game where atmosphere, combat feel, loot tension, enemy design, and player behavior all have to work together in the same match?

Hao Zhang: The hardest part is not perfecting one system, but managing how every system affects the others. Stronger monsters change player routes. More prominent visual effects can hurt PvP readability and performance. More valuable loot attracts more ambushes. Class mobility affects map scale and extraction success rates. Players will also continue to create strategies and playstyles we never anticipated. Because all these systems are tightly connected, even a small change can affect the whole game.

That makes close communication across disciplines essential. Everyone needs to understand the same design goal and make sure their work supports it. Level mechanics create pressure and objectives. Combat offers clear decisions. Loot gives the risk meaning. Enemies and maps create uncertainty. Extraction releases the tension built throughout the match. We regularly create playable slices for internal review and playtesting to make sure every part supports the same coherent experience.

Hao Zhang, Game Director on Mistfall Hunter