Playtesting

Overview

Blight: Survival uses an ongoing playtest program to gather community feedback during development. The program operates on a closed, invitation-only basis, with testers recruited from the official Discord server. Haenir Studio and Behaviour Interactive have confirmed that public playtests are coming in 2026, though no specific date has been announced. The developers have stated that the game will not launch in 2026; the playtest program is part of the path toward an eventual release.

March 2026 Reaffirmation

During the Future Games Show: Spring Showcase 2026 and the accompanying March 2026 developer update, the studio reaffirmed that closed playtests are running now and that public playtests will follow later in 2026. Reveals, playtests, and content cadence will ramp up throughout the year. The exact public-playtest date remains "to be announced."

Closed Playtests

The closed playtest program recruits testers exclusively from the Blight: Survival Discord community (more than 58,000 members as of May 2026). Selected players gain access to development builds and provide direct feedback to the team. The developers describe these sessions as giving players "their initial chance to experience the game firsthand and directly influence its ongoing development."

Closed playtests began in late 2025 with small groups. The sessions are periodic rather than continuous. Testers are selected based on internal criteria that the team has not publicly detailed. Selection is not guaranteed for anyone who signs up; the team picks from the available pool.

What Testers Play

Based on developer communications, playtests focus on the core gameplay loop: entering No Man's Land, combat encounters with infected and human enemies, extraction decisions, and the flow between preparation at the camp and field missions. Specific builds tested may vary between sessions as the team iterates on different systems.

Feedback Areas

The December 2025 developer update summarized what the team worked on throughout the year: the core fundamentals of melee combat, enemy behavior, and environments, all of which support the tension, grit, and brutality the medieval world demands. These are the areas where playtest feedback is most impactful. Testers report on:

• Combat feel: whether the 5-directional melee system feels weighty and responsive

• Enemy AI: whether infected and human enemies create interesting, varied encounters

• Mission flow: whether the pacing between exploration, combat, and extraction works

• Environmental design: whether levels communicate danger and reward through visual cues

• General polish: bugs, performance issues, balance concerns

How to Sign Up

Players can sign up for playtests through two channels:

Both registration methods feed into the same selection pool. The team recruits from this pool on an as-needed basis for each playtest session.

Community Role

Senior Creative Director Ashley Pannell has spoken about the community's role in development. At the Future Games Show 2026, he said:

"One of the things that we have as a result of this is that we have a community with us, and we have a group of people who are on this journey with us. We may have not been loud to the world, but we've been very active with our community, talking to our community, making sure that we get their feedback whenever we can."

This positions the playtest program as more than quality assurance. The community is treated as a collaborative partner in development, with feedback from Discord discussions, playtest sessions, and community polls (such as the May 2023 community poll on enemy concepts) all feeding into design decisions.

Public Playtests

Public playtests remain confirmed for 2026 but no specific date has been announced. As of May 2026 the program is still operating in its closed, Discord-recruited form, with the publisher's Playtest Squad registration available as a parallel signup channel. These will be broader in scope than the closed sessions, giving a larger audience access to the game for the first time. The March 2026 developer update committed to reveals, playtests, and content ramping up throughout the year.

The public playtests represent an important milestone. For most players, they will be the first hands-on experience with the game that has been generating anticipation since its viral 2022 trailer. How the game performs in broader public testing will likely shape both community expectations and the final development priorities before launch.

Timeline