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 fantastic home for the extraction shooter genre ever since Escape from Tarkov released on the platform in November of last year. In 2026, Steam is set to receive another extraction shooter with a unique twist that could rival the likes of ARC Raiders, Tarkov, and Marathon.
The rise of extraction shooters in the past few years is highlighted by ARC Raiders‘ recent Game of the Year win at the Nordic Game Awards. What was once a niche genre has suddenly grown into a substantial mainstream source of 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 like ARC Raiders and Marathon, it has a secret weapon that could elevate its gameplay beyond that of its competitors.
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Beautiful Light Features at a Glance
ENTER — Prepare yourself to face the intervention area, search for the mysterious artifact, or complete your quests.
SECURE — Artifacts all have different properties that can be exploited. You need to 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.
ANOMALY — 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 squads of 3 operators are tasked with entering, securing, and extracting an artifact in a hostile, horrific environment. Face other operators and player-controlled anomalies, but beware: mistakes can risk your life and gear.
Rearrange the covers into the correct US release order.
Rearrange the covers into the correct US release order.
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Beautiful Light is Basically ARC Raiders Meets S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
Unlike the retro-futurist aesthetic of ARC Raiders or the intergalactic sci-fi feel of Marathon, Beautiful Light looks like a standard military extraction shooter at first sight. However, it’s home to a much darker world, one that blends the horror elements of games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. or Metro 2033. The result is a tense extraction shooter where PvP and PvE gameplay clash as players fight for their lives and to extract with the Artifact.
Beautiful Light is scheduled to release on Steam in Early Access in December 2026.
The World of Beautiful Light
In Beautiful Light, players 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 ARC Raiders, the world of Beautiful Light is unforgiving, with threats from both other players and the environment at every turn. Beautiful Light has a major emphasis on its horror elements, with monstrous anomalies waiting to ambush players who go in unprepared.
Beautiful Light matches feature six squads of three operators, giving the game a layer of teamwork on top of its PvPvE gameplay. The goal of a match is to extract alive, after either completing a quest or securing an artifact. As is the case with other extraction shooters like ARC Raiders, dying during a match means the player will lose out on any progress they’ve made and any artifact they’ve collected. This means it’s often better to extract with nothing than die and lose everything.
Completing quests earns Beautiful Light players rewards from NPC traders, allowing them to upgrade their character’s skill tree and increase their chances of survival in the next round. Players can also buy valuable weapons and gear from traders, much like the loadout systems that ARC Raiders and Marathon feature. Beautiful Light gives players a pretty major incentive to kit their character out with the best gear, because the game’s unique gameplay twist adds one important threat they will have to consider each time they embark.
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 asymmetrical multiplayer component that allows some players to hunt other players as an Anomaly. Similar to other asymmetrical multiplayer games like Dead by Daylight, the goal of the Anomaly is to spoil the other players’ runs by eating them and preventing them from extracting with an artifact. To deal with the imbalanced teams, the 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, similar to DBD‘s unique playable killers.
For its Early Access launch, Beautiful Light plans to focus on its core Raid mode: a 24-player PvPvE mode with six squads 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 of games like ARC Raiders that enhances 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 alongside a HUD that takes the form of a forearm PDA for a more diegetic gameplay experience.
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Pick two spots to swap before locking in your final ranking.
Planned for the 1.0 launch are features like leaderboard, ranks, roles, management, and bonus generators, along with an expanded contract system and more maps and weapons. For Steam users looking for a horror-filled extraction shooter experience, it’s worth keeping tabs on Beautiful Light.
