When I went to Gamescom in August, I lined up an interview with Distinct Possibility Studios to discuss Reaper Actual, the team’s debut title, a seemingly over-ambitious open-world persistent shooter that is set to accommodate hundreds of players on a single map.
In Reaper Actual, an ever-evolving world plays host to customizable hideouts, skilled PMCs, intense factions, and an optional blockchain ecosystem that includes NFT features. It looks and plays similarly to Call of Duty’s DMZ, has extraction mechanics like Escape from Tarkov, and boasts the large-scale combat persistence of PlanetSide.
What on Earth is Reaper Actual, and why has it locked down my attention? I caught up with Chief Creative Officer and co-founder Matt Higby to get the scoop post-Gamescom.
Here’s the full video interview if you’d rather learn about Reaper Actual that way:
What is Reaper Actual?
Enter Reaper Actual, an ambitious and developing first-person shooter set in the persistent open-world environment of Marova, a fictional Mediterranean island.
Marova has been taken over by bloodthirsty factions, criminals, and PMCs, all hellbent on securing riches, fame, fortune, and power. Players are tasked with entering Marova as a ‘Reaper’, a talented trooper of sorts, and building up a home base, solving missions and tasks, earning gear, and levelling up amidst an ever-changing meta and evolving platform.
I asked Matt Higby where Reaper Actual came from:
The background of the studio is where a lot of folks who have worked on really large-scale games, primarily like MMO games, but we kind of all come from a part of the studio that loves playing shooters and love competitive online games. We gravitated towards working on games like PlanetSide 2 and H1Z1.
Recently, as technology shifts have come along and new possibilities in the space have opened up and different kinds of game modes have bubbled up, we talk a lot about building a studio, bringing together our expertise for making large-scale games, and our love for these very high-octane, very high-stakes shooter games that are very popular nowadays.
My preview at Gamescom uncovered a game very similar to Call of Duty’s DMZ mode and Gray Zone Warfare, which is a large-scale, open-world extraction shooter. I asked Matt if these were fair comparisons:
In terms of the pacing and the overall moment-to-moment gameplay feel, I think those are totally fair comparisons. Where we’re trying to go above and beyond what a lot of those games are doing, is our focus is on creating a persistent world experience, where your actions and your investment in the game meta over time matters a lot more.
The world has a deeper place for storytelling, fiction, addition of new mechanics and systems over time. The persistent nature of the world means that there are a lot of possibilities in the game world that aren’t really available in those types of games.
From a moment-to-moment perspective, we feel very similar to those games, but we have a lot more possibility space for other kinds of experiences.
Enter Marova as a Reaper
At Gamescom, I was walked through the game by John Smedley, CEO of Distinct Possibility Studios, and immediately, I saw the clear decision to move away from milsim mechanics and hyper-realism and focus on something much more accessible. This isn’t an overly complex game with countless mechanics, but a more ‘arcadey’ shooter with mechanics you’ll feel comfortable with right off the bat.
I asked Matt Higby, Chief Creative Officer, why these elements had been settled on:
We’re going for a higher pacing, for sure. It’s a more actiony game than Escape from Tarkov or Arma. We’re going for a much faster-paced moment-to-moment experience.
With that being said, Reaper Actual accommodates movement mechanics like sliding, tactical sprinting, and vaulting. Players can loot and shoot on the fly, use armor plates to protect themselves, and zip around in vehicles to get across the massive open map much faster.
And on the topic of that map, it’s important to stress that it’s a living, breathing thing that boasts more of a ‘PvPvEvE’ vibe, which is how Matt Higby referred to it.
Having a persistent world sort of really allows us to open up… These different NPC factions can be fighting in battlelines and battlefronts that last hours or even days over certain objectives on the map. Players are continually coming back into and seeing those fights evolve and change in a way that in a more typical session-based experience you’d never really have.
You’ll be able to not only play through that but influence it and see it evolve and change, and not just seasonally, but throughout the course of a season, things will change.
Many people are familiar with playing these sorts of PvPvE games where this is like an environmental factor that’s causing some sort of threat in the game, but primarily it’s a PvP kind of dance, right? We think of our game as being sort of a PvPvEvE, where between these factions, they have different needs-based goals on the island, they’re trying to achieve different things…
Part of that is uncovering the mystery of the island, why there was a civil war, what happened… They have their own angles on it. Playing this game, you’re participating in unravelling some of these mysteries.
Core Principles
Marova’s persistent world will allow players to build up powerful hideouts and bases that have a real, identifiable location on the map. The Reaper system gives players pre-determined loadouts and characters to give them a starting point, but the sky really is the limit once exploration becomes a thing.
As you can expect, Reaper Actual will one day have a thriving player economy driven by resource supply and demand, the trading of weapons, hideouts, and vehicles, and the collection and trading of loot picked up across the world of Marova. There’s a day-night cycle, a weather system, and immersive biomes to be dug through.
I took a deep dive into the blockchain side of things with Matt Higby, and while I won’t run into the nitty-gritty of it here, I’ll stress that it is completely optional and will take nothing away from the game if you don’t use the NFT elements.
This is a free-to-play first-person shooter that will have a season-by-season structure, content drops, deliberate meta shifts, and ever-changing objectives and mission rosters. At launch, which should be in Q1 2026, it’ll be available exclusively on PC, but Matt suggested that there’s potential for Reaper Actual to one day come to consoles.
Everything I learned about Reaper Actual had me hooked, and in the coming weeks, a creator-backed campaign will kick off to start showcasing the game’s foundational alpha build. As a fan of intense extraction shooters, arcade FPS games like Call of Duty, and open-world RPGs, I can safely confirm that Reaper Actual walks a powerful line between all those genres.
Do you think Reaper Actual looks like your kind of game? Let me know what you’re thinking on the Insider Gaming forum.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out the news that a new Battlefield 6 leak has revealed a massive map
Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
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