Airframe Ultra Beta 5 Recap

Hey, racers. I'm Buddy, Head of Publishing for Akupara Games, and today, I'm stepping in for Riv because this is the big one. The end of Beta 5, where we announced our release date as November 5th, 2026. Today, I'm going to walk you through the story of developing Airframe Ultra across all its betas, what we've been looking to playtest, and where the game is headed when it launches in November. But let's start with a pretty quiet change we made.

"You've got a chop-shop hoverbike, a rusted machete, and blood on the motorway."

This is a new line in the store copy and it’s the whole thesis of Beta 5. This is the beta where we’ve put all the Megacity West pieces together. A place where you claw your way up from nothing, race by race. Where you build a bike from scraps and pieces. Where you win games by the skin of your teeth. So, let's talk about how we got here, what Beta 5 actually does, and where we're headed on the way to launch.

From Beta 1 to Beta 5

When we started beta-testing Airframe Ultra, we knew we were going to have to work our way up from small systems to big ones. The earliest betas were entirely about second-to-second gameplay — is it fun to be strapped to an airframe, ripping around a map, trading fire with somebody? That's the foundation everything else gets built on, so that's where we started. Josh wrote a line in a Q&A a while back about betas being about playtesting features-- for the first few betas, all we cared about was nailing this second-to-second loop. The mechanics of winning and losing changed, the weapon spawns changed, we implemented features like the death shop. Our first few betas were all about putting all of this into the right place.

By the time Steam Next Fest rolled around this year, we were ready to zoom out. That beta was about minute-to-minute gameplay: the Circuit System. Instead of a single race being the whole ballgame, you're racing across three rounds, fighting for points, cycling through the circuit until somebody comes out on top. That's the framework that turns "we're doing this for the fun of fighting" into "we're doing this to win the bigger match."

Beta 5 is the last piece of that puzzle, and it's built entirely around hour-to-hour gameplay: the Reputation System.

The Reputation System

Here's the thing we've known since the earliest betas: players sit down, play a couple of matches, and move on unless there's something bigger to build toward. If Airframe Ultra is going to be the kind of game people sink hundreds of hours into — and that's exactly the kind of game we want to make — it needed a reason to keep coming back that's bigger than the next race.

So the Progression System is built around reputation. You start as a low-level nobody, building street cred, gaining infamy in Megacity West, and working your way toward becoming one of the named racers at the top of the underground circuit. That's not a two-match arc. That's a multi-week climb. You and your friends log in every night, and you should walk away with a new piece of gear, a new bike part, a tangible sense that you're closer to the top than you were yesterday. Every podium is a step up to that fame and fortune, the infamy at the apex of Underground Circuit racing.

This does mean that we need to change what players logging into the game for the first time have access to. During testing, we needed everything unlocked for everybody — that's the only way to actually evaluate how different bikes handle against each other, how they play on different maps, what the ceiling looks like. But now that we're moving toward a full launch, that same openness works against the game we're trying to build.

There's this other piece that's really important too: We want Airframe to tell a story and that story isn't "you walk in, create your character, trick them out, then start racing." It's that hardscrabble, blood on the motorway stuff. Working your way up from the Gutter (quite literally.) The other day in the Discord, a very cool user named floof said:

>"it’s like, yeah. the indomitable human spirit to survive and keep creating community in the face of the oppressive post-capitalist concrete hellscape or whatever."

Even though this game is a big multiplayer title, we want players to feel like they can live in this world-- and it's a brutal one to live in. One where you've got to fight for every damn thing you got. Where you need to build a reputation, brick by brick, into a legacy.

The good news: the Progression System is working. It'll need some tuning and balance passes — more on that below — but it's staying for launch.

The Post-Launch Playbook

Now, I'm gonna be real with you: I fucking hate the term "live service." It carries a lot of baggage that doesn't match what we're trying to do here. But make no mistake, we are going to be actively running and operating this game after launch, because the whole point of a multiplayer game is that you can pick it up and play whenever you want, with whoever you want, for as long as you want. So here's how we're structuring that ongoing work, in three tiers:

- Weekly bug fixes. Not every single week will ship a patch, but any time we've got a batch of fixes we can confidently QA, they go out on a fast cadence. If you're catching bugs, keep reporting them — this is the fastest lane we have. Those bugs will process through the Discord and the website like you've already seen, with Riv shepherding things along the way.

- Monthly balance patches. Balance is a pretty complicated beast for us-- there are a lot of variables between bikes, maps, and skill levels, and we've learned the hard way that reacting too fast just creates whiplash. So balance moves on a monthly rhythm, built off the stats we're gathering on the back end, rather than knee-jerk reactions to the things that feel broken at a glance. Airframe is a tough game to learn, so the whole point is to let you actually invest time into sculpting your playstyle without us pulling the rug out from under you every seven days.

- Content patches, every couple of months. These are the big swings —New maps and other expanded systems we want to build into the world, not just incremental additions. Rarer, but a lot more impactful when they land. This is the kind of stuff we'll be making big trailers for.

Other Feedback

Alright, there was some other stuff we wanted to hit on, so here's just a few odds and ends to knock out directly:

Single races and custom lobbies are coming back for launch. We pulled them for Beta 5 on purpose– we needed everyone locked into the Circuit and Progression systems to actually test them, and open lobbies would've undercut that. But for launch, custom lobbies are back, 1,000%. Play it exactly how you want to.

Beta Racer Cosmetics I don't think I need to explain to you how much I love my boy, Bandit99, so let me just fill you in on the Beta Racer Cosmetics plan: Codes! We have your emails, and there will be a code system placed within the game where you can place it. Once you input it, you’ll get all the consumables from the beta racers to use in your own outfits. NOTE: You will receive one consumable paint for your bikes (like the classic Bandit99 spray), but the progression to receive said bikes will remain.

New Turtorialization We have a new Circuit/Gutter tutorial to guide new players through how a match works and functions, through the lens of a fully playable arcade version of the game. I personally want a full game mode of this since it's pretty addicting, but for now, it teaches you everything you need to know to hop in and start your murder spree.

XP Comes From More Than Ranked One of the big pillars for us has always been that this is a chaotic, couch co-op style game rather than something more competitive. We built Ranked into the system because, frankly, that’s how these things are always built, but forcing everyone into Ranked for XP is counter to that “not competitive” goal, so when the game launches, XP won’t be limited to Ranked.

The Release Date: November 5th

This is our vision for Airframe Ultra — these systems, landing in this shape, at this point. We’re going to be putting a ton of work into bugfixing and polish over the next few weeks. We’re going to be balancing based off the beta and continuing well past launch. We’ve got plans for new maps and features in the works. Everything’s locked and loaded for November 5th.

And I made this promise in the Discord but I want to reiterate here as well: You can expect to hear from me and Riv way more often now that we're gearing up for launch. The community means a lot to us, and it's not going anywhere as a priority. And just so you don’t hear it from only me, James gave me this big, juicy quote for all of you:

Being a beta tester is cool, you get to play the game before it comes out. But the downside is that since you play the game before it comes out, when it does come out you have probably already played it! There's no going around that, hahah! We have quite a bit more content planned, but that will be as post-release content, which we want to have a LOT of fun with! [/p]

The 1.0 version of Airframe is the foundation of the experience that we want to build, not the total of it. Not even close. Airframe is intended as a multiplatform game, so I personally don't even consider us "released" until we have the console versions out. From there we have all sorts of fun stuff we REALLY REALLY want to get working on. New maps, old maps, so much clothes, all sorts of mechanics and secrets and cool stuff that I cant even hint at that will completely surprise you. But we cant until we get this 1.0 version out!

So if you jaded beta testers want to see all the cool stuff we have planned, cheer us on as we do the boring drudge work and help us support this release!!

Love you guys, see you on Nov 5th!!

--James

Thank You

But there's this one other piece that I won't let pass me by: Thank you. Seriously, now that we're at the end of the road on the betas, now that we're finally getting into position to launch, I just wanna thank each and every one of you for putting your heart and soul into Megacity West just like we did. To all of you who wrote fanfic, made fan art, and posted clip compilations, I can't tell you how many smiles you've put on our faces. So, seriously, thank you for riding with us on this.

I'm gonna do a livestream in the Discord with members of the community answering questions about the Beta 5 devlog. If there’s anything you’re left wondering about after reading all of the above, I’ll break it down for you the best I can.

If you've got thoughts, bugs, or you wanna share some Bandit99 fan art, I'll be in the Discord. Until then, race on.