This shooter is billing itself as 'the Battlefield Heroes you can actually play'

You want a sassy pitch for an upcoming game? Heroes of Valor is, per publisher Iceberg Interactive's press release, "the Battlefield Heroes you can actually play."

Clearly, it kind of is: It wears its inspiration on its sleeve as a spiritual successor to the now decade-dead free-to-play shooter. It also has a (free) playtest running right now on Steam, where it's "coming soon" into early access.

The third-person shooter takes place in a cartoonish World War 2 and—at current development—features four hero infantry classes with unique abilities, tanks, planes, and motorcycles. It has customizable battle rules, letting you tweak things like time of day, several game modes, and boasts of "intelligent bots that flank, fly, and fight with real strategy."

Developer Fancy Cat Interactive are making Heroes of Valor because they "found themselves waiting endlessly for a successor after [Battlefield Heroes] was taken offline. When none came, they decided to build it themselves."

You can find Heroes of Valor on Steam, where it's currently undergoing a playtest you can apply to join. There's not yet a release date for the early access version, but it intends to stay in early access for about a year.

Battlefield Heroes isn't a game that I'd have expected there to be this kind of nostalgia for, but the Steam forums for Heroes of Valor are filling up with comments excited about the appeal.

Kind of goes to show that even if it passed you by, any given free-to-play game was probably someone's mainstay, everyday game at some point. It's cool to see one of those crowds being catered to by enthusiastic developers.

Speaking of which, did you know that the Battlefield: Bad Company 2 community got their game back online? They did, and you can play it.