Cinder City opens sign-ups for its first pre-alpha test in August

NCsoft has opened sign-ups for the first pre-alpha test of Cinder City, the MMO shooter its studio BigFire Games has been building — the game we knew until last year as Project LLL. This is the first time it's landing in players' hands outside the studio, and the test weekend already has a date: August 14-16.

The weekend is structured in windows: Friday the 14th from 5 to 9 PM PT, plus Saturday the 15th and Sunday the 16th from 5 to 11 PM PT. This first wave is limited to players residing in the United States who are 16 or older, and those selected start receiving access from August 12. One heads-up: the test runs under a strict NDA, so everything seen inside — gameplay and content — is confidential. Sign-ups go through the official playtest site.

What players will get to try, per NCsoft, are the early campaign missions and the multiplayer PvE that anchors the game's co-op. In other words, a narrow, very early slice — not a vertical of the full game. Pre-alpha is pre-alpha.

For anyone meeting it for the first time: Cinder City is a cinematic MMO shooter set in a post-apocalyptic Seoul, built on Unreal Engine 5 with a seamless open world. The story follows Seven on a mission to rescue his daughter Joi across a city overrun by mutated creatures and criminal outfits, with time jumps that fold that dystopia together with other eras. The gameplay leans on realistic firearm combat and large-scale PvE designed around cooperation.

The game is still aiming for a 2026 launch on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, and already has a Steam page with recent material. This test is the first public step toward that goal, and even if it's US-only and under NDA to start, it's the clearest sign yet that NCsoft wants to begin stress-testing the game with real players. Whether it opens to more regions in later waves remains to be seen.