Godsrule: War of Mortals, the “build and battle” game Sega announced earlier this year, is now in open beta.

Godsrule is a mid-core game, combining citybuilding and action RPG genres. Players control the forces of either mystical creatures or bloodthirsty humans in a world that seems heavily inspired by Norse mythology. Like many core strategy titles, users are tasked with erecting and upgrading buildings while establishing an army they can send out on missions.

However, as opposed to many other core games, missions don’t seem to be automated tasks where players simply wait for their minions’ return. Players instead engage in battles on small maps where they have to summon their forces one at a time and directly control the action. As a result, the action is much more hands-on, but one isn’t able to bring in a large horde of characters; maps seem to have various ways of limiting the number of creatures that can be summoned, thereby providing a little extra challenge to the mission.

Since it was announced, Sega and developer Gogogic have maintained the game would launch simultaneously on both the web and iPad, though the game’s web portal doesn’t work on iOS due to Flash Player requirements and a search for the title on the iTunes App Store comes up blank. Strangely, Facebook shows there’s a Godsrule: War of Mortals game with approximately 500 monthly active users, but clicking on the link results in an error page.

As we’ve noted in the past, Godsrule: War of Mortals is an ambitious step for Sega. The company doesn’t have much of a social or mobile presence and core games are becoming an increasingly crowded market with developers trying to follow on the success of companies like Kixeye and Kabam.  That said, Godsrule at least feels different from the typical mid-core titles we tend to see, but it’s too early to tell if its different gameplay and cartoony graphics will be enough to help the game thrive.