What DarkSwarm is, who makes it, and the three moves that get you into the game earliest — wishlist, playtest access, official channels.
You are a bioprinted mercenary working for Valstorm, a private military corporation, running contracts on lost colonial worlds that alien swarms have already overrun. Squads of up to four operatives — Assault, Engineer, Support, Infiltrator — deploy into procedurally generated facilities to recover resources and data, then fight their way back out past thousands of enemies. The swarm adapts, and there is one way out.
Start with the extraction loop guide — deploy, objective, extract — because every system in DarkSwarm hangs off that spine. Then pick an operative by playstyle hunch (kits aren't public yet), and skim the roadmap so you know which dates are real and which are rumors.
Bitfire Games is a Danish studio in Copenhagen, founded in 2022 by Jonas Ejby Raagaard and Hans Oxmond. DarkSwarm is built in Unreal Engine 5, and every piece of art, animation, sound and voice is handcrafted — the Steam page states the game ships “without the use of generative AI.” Publisher Ghost Ship Publishing is the publishing arm of Ghost Ship Games, the Deep Rock Galactic studio family.
Source: Steam store page, Steam news archive & official press kit — snapshot Oct 8, 2026 · Open on Steam ↗
The fourth Closed Alpha starts November 3, 2026 on Steam. How to request access, what changed in each past alpha, and what to expect this time.
2026-10-08Read guide →CLASSESAssault, Engineer, Support, Infiltrator — all four classes are confirmed, their kits are not. How to choose a main before the numbers land.
2026-10-08Read guide →LOOPDeploy, objective, extract: how a Valstorm contract fits together, and why the one-way-out rule turns every decision into an exit-cost decision.
2026-10-08Read guide →