Fellowship Next Fest Preview - Skip to the End and Raid in Chief Rebel's Demo

Last week, I had the opportunity to meet with Chief Rebel once again as they gear up for the open test of their MODA game Fellowship during Steam Next Fest, running from February 24th to March 3rd. With Next Fest renowned for offering players risk-free demos of hundreds of upcoming games, it's the perfect time to get a sneak peek at what's on the horizon. I know I'll be jumping back into Fellowship—if only I can find a good group.

While I wouldn’t call myself a Fellowship veteran by any stretch, my latest preview with the team wasn’t my first foray into the Multiplayer Online Dungeon Adventure (MODA) game. Both times, I was fortunate enough to have the developers guide me through the encounters, and a lot has changed since my last playthrough. Previously, I found myself locked into a DPS role, choosing between Rime and Ardeos—the latter of whom I actually thought I played quite well.

This time around, a host of new characters were available, and fire mage Ardeos was "on vacation." But what truly caught my attention was the introduction of new archetypes. As a MODA game, Fellowship is fundamentally built around team dynamics, meaning no single character is designed to handle an entire encounter solo. That’s not to say that the game is overwhelmingly difficult, but the developers have carefully crafted PvE encounters with simple mechanics that, when layered together, create unique and engaging challenges requiring teamwork to overcome.

 

"The complexity of the game comes from layering all of these really simple-by-themselves mechanics. And when you do that, you're going to start to get weird overlaps. You're going to get weird synergies. Like, here's an enemy where you really don't want to stand close to each other, but we're going to combine it with an enemy where you have to stand close to each other. So, I think somewhere in there is how we think about it. When we design it for the high-end players it's all simple mechanics, and we're trying to figure out how to combine them in cool ways where it gets complex to deal with," Creative Director Axel explained.

With two of each archetype available, I decided to be a bit of a menace and play as a healer—my usual class choice—fully aware of Fellowship's demanding mechanics. Being a dedicated healer in a game with intricate encounter design meant I was at the forefront of ensuring my team's success. We were then transported to an island locale, complete with abandoned pirate cannons and circling shark swarms that were far from friendly.

I chose Sylvie, a nature-focused healer who uses a swarm of butterflies to provide healing over time. Her mechanics highlighted Fellowship's intricate class design. Sylvie commands four pink butterflies and one blue one; each pink butterfly can be placed on a teammate for gradual healing, while the blue butterfly amplifies healing when placed on an ally in need. Managing my butterflies required constant juggling—balancing healing across the team while strategically repositioning the blue butterfly between my allies and myself. Keeping it on me boosted all my healing, but sometimes, the tank needed extra help, and as we progressed, that need only increased.

One of the biggest changes since my last session was the way rewards and progression work. Now, everything is tied to encounter rank—your level and skills only increase after completing the highest dungeon rank available to you. Likewise, gear is only earned upon dungeon completion, meaning if you’re stuck, you’ll need to replay previous dungeons to acquire the necessary equipment to advance. This system reinforces the importance of teamwork; while it’s possible to progress with random groups early on, higher-level encounters demand coordination and experience. Even basic enemy groups required well-timed interrupts to avoid deadly attacks.

It genuinely felt like an endgame raid—but this was just level one for our team. Players accustomed to high-end raiding and dungeon crawling will feel right at home. Meanwhile, I, a butterfly-wielding healer, was working overtime to keep my team alive through three intense boss fights. In Fellowship, you must defeat all the bosses and a set number of enemies to clear a level. The order in which you tackle them is entirely up to the team, allowing for strategic planning. However, skipping too many enemies isn’t an option—you’ll still need to eliminate the majority of them to progress.

"It's not like we have one formula. We have some dungeons that are super linear, and we have some dungeons where there's a few choices, and then we also have one of the adventures, Desert Dunes, which is extremely open. It’s basically in the middle of the desert, so you can really pick and choose which packs you want to take or not," I was told.

The early levels of Fellowship encourage players to familiarize themselves with dungeons, because as you ascend the ranks, the encounters themselves remain the same, but new modifiers and challenges are introduced. Previously, players could choose which modifiers to activate, but now, they are pre-set for each rank to ensure a structured difficulty curve. This change was made after developers noticed players were gravitating toward easier perks to maximize rewards—something they wanted to address. Fellowship embraces challenge, and it delivers in spades.

That level of difficulty might be daunting for players unfamiliar with raid-style encounters or those hesitant due to time constraints. Chief Rebel is keenly aware of this and hopes that the Next Fest demo will provide a smoother onboarding experience.

Is This The Challenging PvE You Ordered?

"The game used to be engaging for the kind of competitive crowd, but it's also important, because one of the big things we're doing with Fellowship is like, hey, you've never tried this, you've heard your friends talk about these kinds of endgame raids and all that, but here's a game where you can just do it straight away. And that's extremely important for us too. We need to give them some kind of a smooth onboarding into this, and that's something we're going to keep an eye on," Axel concluded.

In the end, my team—comprised of overpowered developers and one slightly bumbling overwhelmed healer—emerged victorious. Jumping back into Fellowship was exhilarating, and as a fan of high-end dungeons, I can’t wait to experience these encounters again without the guiding hand of the developers. With the training wheels off, I’ll either rise as a Fellowship veteran or crash and burn spectacularly. I can’t wait to find out which when Fellowship's demo hits Steam on February 24th.