Extractive 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 get another extraction shooter with a unique twist to rival ARC Raiders, Tarkovand Marathon.
The rise of extraction shooters in the past few years is highlighted ARC RaidersRecent 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 an upcoming ambitious indie title. Beautiful Light will join the ranks in 2026. While Beautiful Light can face a tough battle against such giants ARC Raiders and Marathonit has a secret weapon that could elevate its gameplay above that of its competitors.
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Beautiful lighting properties at first glance
ENTRY — Prepare to face a hit area, search for a mysterious artifact, or complete your quests.
SECURE — All artifacts have different properties that can be exploited. You must be the first to secure them and eliminate anything and anyone that stands in your way.
EXTRACT — Fire a flare, call an 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 mining with an artifact.
Beautiful Light, a first-person PvPvPvE tactical extraction shooter where 6 units of 3 operators are tasked with entering, securing and extracting an artifact in a hostile, horrific environment. Take on other operators and player-controlled anomalies, but beware: mistakes can put your life and equipment at risk.
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Beautiful Light is basically ARC Raiders Meets STALKER
Unlike the retro-futuristic aesthetic ARC Raiders or an intergalactic sci-fi feel Marathon, Beautiful Light at first glance it looks like a standard military extraction shooter. However, it is home to a much darker world that mixes the horror elements of games like it STALKER or Subway 2033. The result is a thrilling extraction shooter where PvP and PvE gameplay collide as players fight for their lives and to retrieve an artifact.
Beautiful Light is scheduled for release on Steam in Early Access in December 2026.
A world of beautiful light
IN Beautiful Lightplayers will join the Rapid Reaction Force and enter the strike zone in search of powerful, mysterious artifacts with dangerous potential. Like the hostile enemies of ARC v ARC Raidersworld Beautiful Light he is ruthless, with threats from both other players and the environment at every turn. Beautiful Light it places a heavy emphasis on horror elements, with monstrous anomalies waiting for players who enter unprepared.
Beautiful Light matches involve six groups of three operators each, giving the game a layer of teamwork beyond PvPvE gameplay. The goal of the match is to get a survivor after completing a quest or securing an artifact. As is the case with other extraction shooters ARC Raidersdying during a match means the player loses any progress they've made and any artifacts they've collected. This means that it is often better to profit from nothing than to die and lose everything.
Completing quests earns Beautiful Light players receive rewards from NPC traders, 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, similar to loading systems ARC Raiders and Marathon function. Beautiful Light it gives players a lot of incentive to equip their character with the best gear as the game's unique gameplay twist adds one important threat that they will have to consider every time they board.
An anomaly of beautiful light adds a Dead by Daylight-like twist
While most players join a match as an operator, Beautiful Light has an asymmetric multiplayer component that allows some players to hunt other players as an anomaly. Similar to other asymmetric multiplayer games Dead by Daylightthe goal of the Anomaly is to spoil other players' runs by eating them and preventing them from extracting an artifact. To deal with unbalanced teams, Anomaly has a number of unique skills that players can upgrade by getting more kills per turn. Eventually, players will even be able to unlock additional types of anomalies to play as, such as DBDunique playable killers.
To start early access Beautiful Light plans to focus on its core Raid mode: a 24-player PvPvE mode with six groups of three operators and six players taking on the role of anomalies. The game also aims to provide a level of immersion on par with the sound of games like it ARC Raiders which heightens the horror of the constant threat of anomalies hanging over the player, with ambient breathing, realistic footsteps, a heartbeat and a realistic gas mask, all offered as immersive features along with a HUD that takes the form of a PDA on the forearm for a more diegetic gaming experience.
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Features such as leaderboards, ranks, roles, management, and bonus generators are planned for the 1.0 launch, along with an expanded contract system and additional maps and weapons. For Steam users looking for a horror extraction shooter, it's worth checking out Beautiful Light.
