Yesterday, Genshin Impact developer miHoYo announced that closed beta sign-ups for their new game Honkai: Star Rail will begin today. While it’s set in the same universe as the popular mobile game Honkai Impact 3rd, the announcement confirmed that Star Rail will be available for both mobile and PC.
Honkai Impact 3rd is a mobile gacha game set in an apocalyptic setting where superpowered girls named “Valkyries” must battle a powerful force that creates monsters and natural disasters. Honkai is a third-person action game where players use various ability combinations to defeat machine-like monsters. It eventually received an official PC port in 2019.
From the trailer, Star Rail appears to be an action game with some tactical elements. However, a screenshot on its official website shows that up to four characters can be played at once, and it seems to be a turn-based RPG. The visuals and art style of the trailer seems to more closely resemble Genshin than Honkai.
The website has already revealed character biographies for eight characters. Some of them are researchers, and others are formerly military-affiliated. Several of the listed characters have appeared in the launch trailer, so it’s very likely that some of them will be playable. Only the Japanese voice actors’ names have been revealed so far.
Star Rail was first hinted at when miHoYo registered a trademark for Honkai: Star Rail this July. It was officially announced on its official Twitter account three days ago. On the day of the announcement, an animated video showing the titular space train was posted to YouTube.
There is no release date announced for Honkai: Star Rail, but the announcement page contains a sign-up link. Beta testers will be selected at random, and save data will be deleted after the test. There is currently no confirmed end date for the closed beta sign-ups.