Hyper Universe Paid Early Access Begins, 2 Hours of AI Matches Required Before PvP Queues

Nexon's side-scrolling action MOBA Hyper Universe entered into early access today on Steam as previously announced. The game can be purchased for $9.91 (38% off its regular price of $15.99) until August 30th. Anyone who participated in a previous alpha test can play it for free on Steam, but everyone else needs to either buy it or wait until it full launches (will be free at launch). There's been quite a few balance changes since the first round of alpha testing. Full early access patch notes can be seen here.

My one big gripe with Hyper Universe at the moment is its poorly designed mandatory AI match system. Until players reach level 6 they can't reliably queue up against actual players and instead get matched against AI. What makes this system especially frustrating is that players can actually click on the PvP queue starting at level 1 but unless they can find a match within ~12 seconds the game auto tosses them into an AI game. According to Hyper Universe's community manager it takes on average ~2 hours of grinding these AI matches to hit level 6 and be done with the bot games once and for all. I don't know about you, but I don't think playing against mindlessly dumb AI for 2 hours is my idea of fun. Fortunately, the game is still in early access and this is subject to change before full release.