PAX East 2025: ‘Elden Ring Nightreign’

The Elden Ring Nightreign experience was impossible to miss at PAX East this year. A giant blue dome in the middle of the Expo Hall with a near-constant line made it instantly compelling and a destination for casual and hardcore fans alike.

The nice thing about the experience is that it was ticketed: Line up early, grab a time slot, and show up 15 minutes before the event. I was able to snag a spot on Saturday, but walked in not knowing what to expect: Will we play the game? Watch a canned video? A live re-enactment of the game? Turns out it was something in the middle.

While most of us in the theater experience were not able to actually play the new game in the Elden Ring universe, we did get to watch a live playthrough, and one of the audience members got to play the game. A pro v-tuber was playing with them as was a developer from the studio, making this a three-person live match showing off what Elden Ring Nightreign is all about.

This is a standalone co-op experience, very different from the main game, and it’s DLC. Instead of an epic single-player experience, groups of three play through three nights trying to defeat the ancient evil that is transforming the land.

Set up in a similar format to CoD Warzone and PubG, the premise has the land succumbing to evil all day and trying to find a place of respite to last the night. The map slowly contracts as a wave of energy shrinks it inside a circle until night falls; the heroes need to battle as much as possible until they are in the center and night falls.

Instead of developing a character as the game progresses in Elden Ring, the players here get to choose from eight classes and can customize as they level. Leveling happens quickly as the party avoids the ring and takes on mini-bosses and hoards.

Planning a build and choosing drops to enhance it was key to the success of the party we watched. They had great drops, cleared the maps quickly, and were able to make some amazing builds over the three days until they had to face the ultimate boss.

Larger bosses appear occasionally and if taken down reward with much better drops of weapons, armor, and items. This is the key to build generation, as leveling is fairly automated, with stat boosts to level up any time experience is claimed.

The levels and bosses are randomized, so each run will be radically different, and I can tell you firsthand that watching this for nearly an hour was exhilarating. The gameplay has been tweaked and enhanced for quick and enjoyable co-op experiences with leveling, pathfinding, loot, and fall damage (there is none) addressed in beautiful ways.

It is obvious the goal is to make a fun and challenging multiplayer experience in the Elden Ring universe, and my own impressions were that they succeeded. The audience was excited and cheering, the players were loving it, and the onscreen action was exciting to watch, let alone play.

This is a new venture for FromSoft and from what I have seen it will be a raging success. Elden Ring Nightreign is a standalone experience releasing May 30 on PC via Steam, PlayStation |5 and Xbox Series S|X.