Prologue: Go Wayback! opens a closed beta on Steam and the Epic Games Store from May 7 to 14

Numbers first: one week of closed beta, from May 7 to 14, on two stores (Steam and the Epic Games Store) and a new map every match. PLAYERUNKNOWN Productions, the studio founded in 2021 by Brendan Greene, has opened a new closed beta of Prologue: Go Wayback!, a single-player hardcore survival roguelike.

For those who just arrived: Greene is the “PLAYERUNKNOWN” in the nickname, the creator of the battle royale mode that became PUBG: Battlegrounds. This time, the proposal is very different: no hundred players on an island, but one person alone trying to survive in an unforgiving open world.

How to join the beta

Sign-up is done through the studio’s official Discord, which is also the channel for sending feedback during the test. Epic Games itself published an interview with Greene and the team to accompany the beta launch.

Translating the jargon

The central technical point is the terrain. According to the studio, the maps are generated with a machine learning-based technology, which makes it possible to create millions of unique maps. In practice, this means memorizing the route is useless: every match starts in a new place.

The rest of the package follows the survival-without-training-wheels playbook:

• no tutorials and no on-screen help;
• dynamic weather, with strong storms and freezing temperatures;
• the environment and found tools as your only allies;
• non-linear world, with no defined objectives or predetermined path.

In other words, the game won’t hold your hand. At most, it will watch you shiver from the cold.

A step toward Project Artemis

The studio treats the beta as a milestone on the road to Project Artemis, its vision of a huge, fully emergent digital world. Before that, two other titles are planned, each meant to solve a technical challenge of that construction. The team has about sixty engineers and artists.

The official trailer is on YouTube, and the game’s page is on Steam.

What came next

According to the Steam page, Prologue: Go Wayback! was officially released on June 17, 2026, as a free PC game, with a Brazilian Portuguese interface.

Source: PLAYERUNKNOWN Productions.