Extraction shooters seem to be all the rage right now, with games like ARC Raiders and Marathon making the genre more accessible to newcomers than ever before. Steam has been a great home for the extraction shooter genre ever since Escape from Tarkov was released on the platform last November. In 2026, Steam will receive another extraction game with a unique twist to rival the likes of ARC Raiders, Tarkovand Marathon.
The rise of extraction shooters in recent years is highlighted by ARC Raiders' recent win of Game of the Year at the Nordic Game Awards. What was once a niche genre has suddenly grown into a significant mainstream source for Steam games, with the upcoming ambitious indie title Beautiful light set to join the ranks in 2026. While Beautiful light may face an uphill battle against giants who ARC Raiders and Marathonit has a secret weapon that can elevate its gameplay beyond that of its competitors.
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Beautiful lighting features at a glance
ENTER — Prepare to face the intervention area, search for the mysterious artifact, or complete your missions.
SAFE — Artifacts all have different properties that can be exploited. You must be the first to secure them and eliminate whatever and whoever stands in your way.
EXTRACT — Shoot a flare, call in the extraction helicopter, and escape before something kills you—with or without the artifact.
PROGRESS — Spend your rewards wisely in an RPG-like progression tree to level up your character and improve your skills.
ANOMALITY — Play as an anomaly to hunt, kill and eat players to prevent them from extracting with the artifact.
Beautiful Light, a PvPvPvE tactical first-person extraction shooter where 6 teams of 3 operators are tasked with entering, securing and extracting an artifact in a hostile, horrific environment. Encounter other operators and player-controlled anomalies, but beware: mistakes can risk your life and equipment.
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Beautiful Light is basically ARC Raiders meets STALKER
Unlike the retro-futuristic aesthetic of ARC Raiders or the intergalactic sci-fi feel of Marathon, Beautiful light looks like a normal military recovery shooter at first glance. However, it is home to a much darker world, one that mixes the horror elements of games like STALKER or Subway 2033. The result is a tense extraction game where PvP and PvE gameplay collide as players fight for their lives and to extract with the artifact.
Beautiful light is scheduled for release on Steam in Early Access in December 2026.
The world of beautiful light
IN Beautiful lightplayers will join the Quick Reaction Force and enter the intervention area in search of powerful, mysterious artifacts with dangerous potential. Like the hostile ARC enemies in the ARC Raidersthe world off Beautiful light is unforgiving, with threats from both other players and the environment at every turn. Beautiful light has a heavy emphasis on its horror elements, with monstrous anomalies waiting to ambush players who walk in unprepared.
Beautiful light matches feature six teams of three operators, giving the game a layer of teamwork beyond its PvPvE gameplay. The goal of a match is to extract alive, after either completing a mission or securing an artifact. As is the case with other extraction shooters such as ARC Raidersdying during a match means the player will lose any progress they've made and any artifacts they've collected. This means that it is often better to mine with nothing than to die and lose everything.
Completing missions earns Beautiful light players receive rewards from NPC merchants, allowing them to upgrade their character's skill tree and increase their chances of surviving the next round. Players can also purchase valuable weapons and equipment from merchants, much like the loading systems ARC Raiders and Marathon feature. Beautiful light gives players a pretty big incentive to equip their character with the best gear, as the game's unique gameplay twist adds a significant threat that they must consider every time they board.
Beautiful Light's Anomaly Adds a Dead by Daylight-Like Twist
While most players will join a match as an operator, Beautiful light has an asymmetric multiplayer component that allows some players to chase other players as an anomaly. Similar to other asymmetric multiplayer games like Dead in daylightthe objective of the anomaly is to destroy the other players' runs by eating them and preventing them from extracting with an artifact. To deal with the unbalanced teams, Anomaly has a variety of unique skills that players can upgrade with the more kills they earn in a round. Eventually, players will even be able to unlock other types of anomalies to play as, like DBDunique playable assassins.
For the launch of Early Access, Beautiful light plans to focus on its core raid mode: a 24-player PvPvE mode with six teams of three operators and six players taking on the role of anomalies. The game also aims to deliver a level of immersion on par with the audio in games like ARC Raiders which heightens the horror of having the constant threat of anomalies hanging over the player, with ambient breathing, realistic footsteps, heartbeats and a realistic gas mask, all touted as immersive features along with a HUD that takes the form of a forearm PDA for a more diegetic gaming experience.
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Planned for the 1.0 release are features such as leaderboards, ranks, roles, leadership and bonus generators, along with an expanded contract system and more maps and weapons. For Steam users looking for a horror-filled extraction gaming experience, it's worth keeping an eye on Beautiful light.
