Everything you need to know about the Omega Strikers open beta

Just before Christmas, Odyssey Interactive brough their fast and fun 3v3 knockout striker title, Omega Strikers, to mobile in the form of an open beta. The game had previously been available to play in beta on Steam since September, but when the game was announced the developers were very clear about their intent to bring the game to smaller screens.

I had been previously dabbling with Omega Strikers on PC, but only truly dove in head-first once I could get my hands on it in mobile form. Since release, I've poured a ton of time into it and can shed some insight on future plans for the game in addition to some tips to help you get started if you want to pick it up yourself and try it out.

What is this game?

Omega Strikers is a competitive multiplayer game where two teams of three players try to hit an puck-like object (known as a core) into a goal. It sounds a lot like hockey at first, but there are some important differences that ultimately make the game feel unique.

The first is the characters. Much like games like Overwatch or League of Legends, Omega Strikers has a diverse roster of characters and each one has their own set of special abilities that give them distinct edges in matches. Some of these characters are fairly straightforward, like a giant hamster creature who seems tuned to act as a goalie considering his size and ability to create barriers and roll on top of the core to stop it. Others are less obvious, like Era, a flat-toned witch who can give speed and size buffs to her teammates and use a large, slow-moving projectile to shut down areas of the arena.

Another big difference is that Omega Strikers allows for players to fight and temporarily knock each other out of the action during a match. If players get bumped by abilities into the arena wall, they vaporize and are unable to help their team for a designated period of time. Knocking out enemies can take a fair amount of strategy, though, as it only becomes easy to knock players around after depleting their life bar, which can take some time and effort that could be better spent just trying to get the core into the goal.

There are a lot of other departure points from a standard sports game, but these are the big two that really give you a sense of how Omega Strikers stands out.

Open beta vs. release period

To join the Omega Strikers open beta on iOS, click this Testflight link. In order to see and join the beta on other platforms, visit the Odyssey Interactive site at https://www.odysseyinteractive.gg/omegastrikers. Keep in mind the game is still in active development and doesn't always perform in ways you might expect. For example, I tested controller support for the iOS version and it worked, but it also broke the ability to switch back to touch controls unless I deleted and re-downloaded the app. Generally speaking, though, the match action works the way you expect it to.

All that said, there is only a limited amount of time to join and play in the beta. According to Odyssey Interactive, the Omega Strikers beta will only run through the end of this month (that's four days at the time of this writing) and then will shut down. From there, the game should release in April of 2023 along with a boatload of announced changes (and perhaps a few more unannounced ones. Who can say?).

If you decide to join the beta, though, you can get a head start on leveling up your account. Odyssey Interactive has already confirmed that any progress players make between now and the end of the beta will carry over to the full release, including character unlocks and other purchases.

Monetization

Speaking of purchases, it's worth noting that Omega Strikers is free-to-play, and its monetization model so far seems... ok? I hesitate on the judgement partially because I'm sure adjustments to currencies and unlock prices are coming with the official release. Even if everything stays how it is currently in beta, there are some slight annoyances, though things could very easily be a lot worse.

Omega Strikers begins by granting you access to a few starting characters and equippable "trainings" that let you somewhat tune characters to specific play styles. The remaining characters and trainings are available in the game shop where players can spend premium or free-to-play currency to unlock them. Alongside those items are skins, emotes, and goal effects that players can also unlock to change how the game or their characters look.

The good news about all of this is none of these purchases hide inside loot boxes, nor is there any system for upgrading characters or trainings by purchasing duplicates of them. You can just buy what you want directly and that's that, with the only gating being around whether or not you've earned enough coins or want to spend money to unlock those things. There is a slight exception to this in that Omega Strikers has a battle pass as well, but that still is very clear about the earnable items contained within it. In fact, the battle pass is almost always a tempting offer as it usually contains exclusive skins or other unlockables that are only attainable through buying into it via premium currency.

My slight gripe with all of this is mostly around how two balance-related items (characters and trainings) are gated behind a shop. This makes it so free players will need to grind quite a bit before feeling like they have the flexibility to be fully competitive no matter what position or matchup they find themselves in, though arguably the logic in this monetization model is that if players care that much about that they could just pay a little bit of money and be set.

Is it good?

I've been enjoying my time with Omega Strikers. It can be intense and frenetic at times, but the amount of time it requires and the complexity of the sport are relatively low. This makes it easy to hop into and have a good time, even with new players or folks who generally don't play a lot of competitive games.

The flipside of that is that Omega Strikers in its current form has some potential to grow a little stale if you are trying have extended sessions with it to grind out currency or ranks. For the most part, I'm totally fine with this because I don't want Omega Strikers (or really any game) to be my next obsession. I like to have fun with my friends playing as colorful characters in a fun sports-like context and then punch out for a while.

With the announced changes coming to the game in the spring, though, all this could change. It sounds like quite a few wrinkles are getting added to the core Omega Strikers dynamic that could potentially raise the skill level required for competitive play so that it appeals to more hardcore players and incentivizes mastering advanced techniques. Time will tell though. Until then, I'm going to log some more time in the last week of the beta before its release and make sure to hop in once Omega Strikers is officially out to render a full review.