Namco Bandai, publisher of From Software’s upcoming dark fantasy RPG sequel Dark Souls III, has announced the game’s release date. Gamers who are preparing to die yet again can look forward to April 2016, as that’s when the game is slated for release in the US, Europe, Australia and more.

Namco Bandai has also announced that there will be a Network Stress Test – similar to the prerelease of Dark Souls II, players will be able to get their hands on an early build of the game and experience some of the online play we’ll be using at launch. Registrations are open from tomorrow (September 18th) until October 4th, so be sure to register while you can. Full details follow, although it is not clear what is meant by “elected testers”. And sorry, Xbox One and PC players, but it looks like this testing phase is only available on PS4.

The Network Stress test is designed to allow elected testers to play the game for various tech verifications and is intended for quality improvement of the final product. The Network Stress Test will be available on PlayStation®4:

Information
Game server load evaluation
Multiplayer gameplay evaluation
Game balance evaluation
Registering
September 18th, 2015 at 5:00 p.m. CEST to Sunday, October 4th, 2015 at 5:00 p.m. CEST (planned)
Network Stress Test sessions
Friday, October 16th, 2015 at 8:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. CEST
Saturday, October 17th, 2015 at 8:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. CEST
Sunday, October 18th, 2015 at 8:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. CEST

For those in the UK, CEST is one hour ahead of BST, so plan accordingly if you manage to get in, and above all, have fun dying a lot. Dark Souls III releases for PS4, Xbox One and PC in April 2016.