Planned Release Date: 2026

About This Game

Draft. Position. Watch it play out.

Ancient Arbiter is an auto-battler built around a tower defense frame. There's no tower placement and no real-time input during combat — you spend your prep time drafting heroes into a fixed formation, and once a wave starts, everything resolves on its own. Your job happens entirely before the fight: who you recruit, where you put them, and how you gear them. Losing means your comp had a hole in it, not that you missed a click.

Set in the sun-scoured ruins of a lost civilization — the Aurveil — you're rebuilding an ancient Arbiter tower, recruiting wasteland survivors and salvaged tech to hold the line against whatever the desert throws at you next.

An Auto-Battler at Its Core

Preparation has no timer — take as long as you want arranging heroes, shopping, and adjusting targeting before you commit. Then combat runs fully automatically, and you're free to just watch, or push the time-scale up to 3x and blow through waves you've already solved. The tension lives entirely in the setup phase: nine tower slots (three rows × three columns) plus three frontline slots are your whole board, and row position alone changes a hero's damage and cooldowns. Every targeting mode you assign — First, Strongest, Weakest, Lowest Resistance, Flying, Ground, Nearest — is another lever you pull before the fight starts, not during it.

A Growing Roster, Real Roles

Recruit heroes through a pick-one-of-three draft as you climb waves. Each hero has a distinct attack pattern, an ultimate that fires on its own cooldown, and passives you unlock over time through their personal specialization tree. Frontline tanks block and soak damage so your ranged and support heroes can work from behind them; supports heal and shield the squad; snipers and burst casters pick off priority targets. No hero is the obviously correct pick every time — the right lineup depends on what a given wave is throwing at you.

Six Elements, One Universal Armor Rule

Damage comes in six flavors — Physical, Celestial, Plasma, Cryo, Gravity, and Void — each with its own identity (crit-focused, damage-over-time, crowd control, healing) and all governed by the same armor/resistance formula, so nothing is ever a special case. Later waves roll a resistant element that punishes a mono-element team, and enemies can stack a wide range of status effects — stuns, freezes, armor breaks, burns, silences, and more. Your comp has to answer for what's coming, not just hit hard.

Deep, Long-Term Power Progression

Items: Gear across many armor sets and five rarities from Common to Legendary, each with set bonuses and rollable stat lines.

Artifacts & Runes: Account-wide artifacts and socketable runes, earned from boss fights, wave milestones, and side Expeditions.

The Forge: Craft, upgrade, and reroll your gear instead of just hoping for drops.

Skill Tree: A sprawling radial tree across six elemental branches that buffs your whole roster at once.

Promotions: Every hero has their own specialization path, freely reconfigurable between waves.

Vehicle Modules: Permanent, account-wide upgrades installed into the tower itself, that persist across resets.

Endless Waves, Real Stakes

Before every wave you choose between three cards, each independently rolling a difficulty tier — Normal, Hard, or Elite — trading more enemies and higher stats for better loot odds. Boss fights land at regular milestones as their own separate encounters with dedicated rewards. There's no fixed ending: waves scale forever, so the goal is climbing as high as your roster and gear can carry you.

A Scavenger's Loot Loop

Every wave guarantees a payout of gold and gems — never a popup, just your wage. On top of that, each wave independently rolls for salvage materials, a run-scoped trinket, and a permanent cache (an item crate or a crafting blueprint). Rarity is capped by how deep you've gone, so early runs stay grounded while a long run can eventually earn its way to Epic and Legendary gear.

Beyond the Run — The Bunker

Between runs, the Bunker is your hub: a Mastery Forge with perks spanning nearly every system in the game, a Trophy Hall, an Archive, and a Control Room. Send heroes out on Expeditions and Excavations to bring back runes and loot passively. When you're ready for a clean slate, Retire resets your run while keeping everything you've earned account-wide — gems, skill points, artifacts, runes, and promotions.

Built to Keep Going

Steam Cloud keeps your saves in sync across machines, and leaderboards and clans let you compare your best wave against friends and the wider community.

Genre: Auto-Battler / Tower Defense / Roguelite Progression

Playtime: Runs range from a focused 20-minute session to open-ended, multi-hour climbs — there's no scripted campaign length, just how far you can push.