Risk of Rain Returns developer video features alternative Survivor abilities and teases at least three new characters

Risk of Rain Returns is set to be a unique remaster edition of the classic game and Hopoo Games’ final stamp on the Risk of Rain franchise before officially handing it off to Gearbox Publishing. Ahead of the highly-anticipated release, the developers have shared an in-depth video showing off new alternative abilities for many of the characters.

These abilities were shared in Hopoo Games’ Developer Thoughts 29 video, where community manager Jonathan Cheetham details these significant changes and how a player can best optimize them in combat.

Related: Risk of Rain Returns reimagines the classic roguelike from Hopoo Games and Gearbox

From what we can tell, each skill in a character’s kit will have an alternative option that you can pick from the menu. You’ll need to select which of the two options you want to go with before starting a run, which could greatly change things up depending on the different items and upgrades provided along the way.

One of the changed abilities we saw was for the Commando, swapping out the Full Metal Jacket for a Combat Knife. Traditionally, Full Metal Jacket is an attack that shoots through enemies, making it a superb choice to line up multiple foes on top of each other and take them all out once. However, players can swap that out for the Combat Knife, an attack that slashes through enemies and wounds them for a few seconds. All wounded enemies would take additional damage while in this state.

This was one of the many abilities highlighted in the developer video, with the entry covering at least one ability for each character.

While the video is going through the Risk of Rain Returns character selection screen, we also saw three additional slots covered up by playful images. These slots will likely be the new characters that Hopoo Games will be adding to the game when it officially launches, but these were not covered in this video. We’ve known more characters were coming, but this seems to confirm we’re getting at least three.

This Developer Thoughts video also did not share an official release date, but we can likely expect something closer to the spring or early summer. Risk of Rains Returns should be coming out sometime in 2023.