Ares Games’ Pekelní strážci is now beyond the crowd-funding process and has begun the slow journey toward developmental completion. Before doing so they’ll take a short detour through Steam’s Early Access, which gets underway on June 6th.

The developers announced that the four-player cooperative tower-defense, hack-and-slash game will land in Early Access during the first full week of June, and it will stay there in the developmental branch of Steam over the next three to four months.

Whether or not Ares Games can maintain that time frame is a whole other story, but so far they’ve been managing to keep on track and they have plans to roll out additional maps, a progression system and more playable characters.

You can see what they have up and working so far with the Early Access launch trailer below.

The animations are a bit stiff, and the hit-detection and reaction animations are a little off, but it does show potential.

One of the characters can fire long-range weapons at enemies from a distance, while another can get in close and use his sword and shield to fight and fend off enemies from the area. Another character can use a variety of magic abilities, and all of the characters can set down towers to defend the area from enemy hordes.

It looks like a slightly poor man’s version of Dungeon Defenders.

But given that the game is heading into Early Access, it’s not a bad thing. They’ll have another three to four months to fix up the animations, improve the overall quality of the gameplay and ensure that the title plays like a top notch tower-defense game.

Pekelní strážci will have a diverse selection of dynamic maps to play through, along with various character classes to master and enemy bosses to overcome.

Můžete se podívat Pekelní strážci to launch into Early Access on the Parní store starting June 6th for $14.99.