Vostok Games announces open beta testing is underway in European territories for Survarium, the MMOFPS which is the less controversial of the two upcoming spiritual successors to the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series of first-person shooters. This is offered with language support for English, Russian, Ukrainian, German, and Polish, and other European localizations are in the works. They also stress that this milestone does not mean the end of development, saying: "on the contrary, the studio plans to further develop the game and introduce multiple new features, including the highly-anticipated FreePlay (PvE) mode." Here's a new open beta trailer and here's a refresher on the game:

Survarium is a free2play MMOFPS game set in the near future. The game focuses on the aftermath of a massive ecological catastrophe on Earth, the reasons behind which are only vaguely known.

Impassable woods advance onto cities from every side, as maddened animals and birds attack industrial complexes, military structures, warehouses and power-plants. Strange plants and mushrooms grow through concrete and steel. Scientists all over the world haplessly try to cope with the anomaly expanding with terrifying speed across the planet. Countries collapse; anarchy spreads throughout the world. Now force dictates who can survive.

The game is developed with new proprietary Vostok Engine technology.