Ever since EPIC reworked Fortnite from a cooperative co-op, zombie hunting game, to a near feature for feature copy of Player Unkown’s Battleground, the Battle Royale format has become one of the hottest video game trends of all time.
And since PUBG only pushed forward the concepts of previous games like Mine craft and World of WarCraft, it seems fair for other games to get in on the action. Here’s a list of other games that might try to make the most of this moment by also retrofitting the worlds and characters that gamers already love.
The Obvious
Super Smash Bros.
It could be argued that the Battle Royale format is a first-person version of the original Super Smash Bros. Nintendo has shown their world-building capabilities in Breath of the Wild, the most recent version of the Legend of Zelda series, and nearly everything Mario touches turns to gold. It’s true that the first-person version of Smash Bros. would be a step away from the one screen format that makes it unique. But, a spin-off that mixed the action of Smash Bros. with the chaos of Mario Kart would be a must play.
Assassin’s Creed
This game is already about hand-to-hand combat, and Ubisoft has always made new iterations of this game to keep it fresh and familiar at the same time. By focusing on up-close, fragile, highly skilled combat, this game could separate itself from other games in this space. Primitive, handheld weapons instead of futuristic, overwhelming guns stumbled onto by chance would emphasize player skill over chance and randomness. Because of the Creed, all assassins would have the same weapons and survive on cleverness and fighting ability.
Ghost Recon: Wildlands
At this point, there would probably be a lot of accusations about jumping on the bandwagon, (even though Fortnite mostly got a pass for copying PUBG) but this game seems like the perfect setting for PvP gameplay. The jungles provide a lot of, and the drug factory mazes would make for a lot of up close action. If players spawned in as cronies, maybe Ubisoft could let them earn rewards or loot to take back to their own cartel in story mode.
The Maybes
Grand Theft Auto
GTA made chaos in the sandbox popular, and turning it into a free-for-all wouldn’t even change the gameplay that much. It’s true that fans of this game love the plot, but if the cage match version only allowed players to use the characters they built in story mode, it could be an exciting way to test your skills against other players. Rockstar already has plenty of maps, vehicles, and weapons to fill out the game, and some players might appreciate a more realistic approach to finding weapons stash houses or pawn shops instead of magically appearing from the sky. Avoiding attention from police and bystanders would also be an interesting variation for this category.
Rocket League
It’s not exactly clear how this would work, and it would be a pretty significant departure from the already arena contained gameplay, but the last player standing version of this could be interesting. Maybe they take away the goals altogether, and it just becomes a demolition derby game? Perhaps they add a track it becomes a roller derby type of play. Or, they keep the goals and add extra balls and the player with the fewest goals is eliminated every five minutes. I would definitely trust the designers to turn the already fast-paced action into a fun to play, elimination style game.
Far Cry 5
Since nobody really understood the story of the last Far Cry, a Battle Royale could make good on the sheer fun it is to play this game. Maybe in this version of a shrinking map, when players get injured, they have the option to join the cult of their attacker and continue to fight. Instead of last man standing, it’s previous cult standing, and the armies grow as the game progresses.
The Please Just Try-its
Kingdom Come: Deliverance
Knowing that games are expensive to develop and release, it still seems worth it to combine the Battle Royale format with the realism of this medieval RPG. This game could even attempt a long-form version where the character spawns with no ability or self-defense and improves over time. Players could continue in the same arena for an hour every day until the mayhem of inexperience finally caught up to them.
Katamari Damacy
It would be fun to see this format applied to non-violent games. A battle royale for rolling up the environment would basically be a first-person version of the mobile game paper.io, but the shrinking borders would make sense for the physics already in the game, and it may become an exciting strategy version of the PVP format.
