Not even two months after the previous ‘Remnant’ patch, Hello Games is back with another massive No Man’s Sky update titled XENO ARENA.
This time, the independent UK developer is introducing a full-fledged Pokémon-style battling system. Wildlife that has populated No Man’s Sky planets for a decade now has a direct gameplay purpose: you can catch creatures, raise them, and pit them against other players’ creatures in competitive arena battles. Beyond the obvious Pokémon reference, Hello Games has also mentioned World of Warcraft’s pet battling as an inspiration.
Creatures found across the universe can be recruited into the player’s squad, with rarer biomes like toxic planets or frozen moons yielding rarer and more powerful creatures. Each species has abilities tied to its home world’s biome type; a toxic-world blob has different abilities than an arctic flying dinosaur. There are also legendary variants: extraordinarily rare creatures with exceptional stats that can become highly valuable within the player economy.
In XENO ARENA, creatures level up through feeding, bonding, and sparring over time; they can also be genetically modified to create new variants and unique colour combinations. Holo-arenas are found in Space Stations and the Nexus, No Man’s Sky’s multiplayer hub. Here, players can battle against friends, strangers, and NPCs. A full Ranks and Leagues progression system is included, and seasonal rewards are promised to keep the competition fresh long-term. Daily challenges offer high-tier rewards. The Xeno Arena is also a buildable structure: players can construct their own arena, open it to other travellers, host tournaments, and travel the galaxy to challenge other players’ arena champions.
It will be interesting to see how popular this new “game mode” becomes and whether Hello Games continues to expand it after this initial update.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief.
In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech’s gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews.
Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications.
His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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