Reaper Actual is shaping up to be an ambitious open-world persistent shooter where hundreds of players drop into the massive war-torn island of Marova to clash against both one another and five unique NPC factions. Developed and published by Distinct Possibility Studios, the game blends MMO-style persistence with tense FPS combat, offering players Bases to maintain, factions to fight, gear to upgrade, and missions to complete as they carve out their path in a living, breathing battlefield.
An Island Alive with Conflict
Marova isn’t just another static map. Players will deploy across five distinct biomes, each occupied by factions that control infrastructure and engage in constant conflict with one another. As a Reaper, you’ll level your operator, weapons, and gadgets while navigating dynamic PvPvE encounters—deciding whether to engage or avoid other squads in your pursuit of mission objectives. With access to air, land, and sea vehicles, every run into the field will offer its own unique challenges and opportunities.
Your Base acts as your personal stronghold. Here, you’ll brief before deployments, restock gear, and plan your next mission. Missions will range from high-value target takedowns to resource collection for the game’s deep crafting system, pushing players to balance risk and reward at every step.
Our Gamescom 2025 Sitdown
At Gamescom Germany 2025, our team was lucky enough to sit down one-on-one with a member of the dev team for Reaper Actual. The meeting took place late in the weekend at a hotel near the event, where we were shown the game in action on a laptop.
While we weren’t able to fully get hands-on with the build ourselves just yet (that’s coming at the end of September for us), we were walked through gameplay and development progress. Visually, the game already looked solid. Some weapon damage balancing issues were noticeable—point blank headshots against AI weren’t dropping them as expected—but the dev assured us that combat tuning is still very much in progress.
What excites us most is the game’s MMO-like persistence. Unlike other extraction shooters with instanced maps, Reaper Actual aims to run continuously, with both NPCs and players creating firefights across Marova around the clock. The vibes are a hybrid of Escape from Tarkov’s intensity and Gray Zone Warfare’s always-online world—no loading screens, no downtime, just a living battlefield.
The Big Questions
We also discussed missions, pacing, and anti-cheat systems with the dev. One concern raised was avoiding missions that feel like long, drawn-out fetch tasks, a common pitfall in other shooters. The team assured us that variety is a priority to keep objectives engaging.
On the anti-cheat front, Reaper Actual will launch with Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC), but the dev explained additional layers are being built in, including server-side logging and AI-driven cheat detection to spot suspicious behavior in real-time. Given how persistent and competitive the game aims to be, this will be critical for its long-term health.
Final Thoughts
Reaper Actual has potential, and while it’s still early, what we’ve seen so far has us intrigued. The mix of PvPvE, persistent servers, MMO progression, and faction battles could carve it a space in the competitive shooter genre—if the execution lands. We’ll be going hands-on with a playable build at the end of September and will have much more to share then.
In the meantime, you can wishlist the game now on Steam and join the growing community across their official Discord, Twitter/X, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, TikTok, and Telegram.
