Chinese gaming company Tencent Games announced that Ring of Elysium has officially entered into Early Access on Steam as a free-to-play title. The game launched with a Founder’s Pack for $2.99 for anyone willing to throw a few coins their way (for whatever reason).
While this is yet another Battle Royale game, the difference between Ring of Elysium and every single other title out there is that Tencent decided to do something different with the way the game plays out. It’s like a mix of extreme sports meets last man standing.
What’s more is that they wanted the pace of the interactions and combat to be similar to Kinji Fukasaku’s 2000 film Battle Royale. This was achieved by breaking down the map into various biomes that have different levels of requirement to interact with the environment, such as some segments requiring players to snowboard down the mountainside, while others require players to scale the mountainside using mountaineering skills.
The different kinds of traversal and interactive elements forces players to have to think about how they engage with others and whether or not they’ll want to risk certain routes to get to safety. Some of you might be thinking “Well, why would you have to mountaineer?” and it might be because that’s where the rescue helicopter is located, even though it leaves you wide open for a sniper attack.
Perhaps the only way out of the stage is through the slalom, requiring you to snowboard and dodge other players as you race toward the bottom.
The main objective is to get to the rescue helicopter, but there’s only room for one.
To further complicate matters, there’s a terrible blizzard in tow, and if you don’t get out of the area in time, the avalanche will over take the area and the blistering cold will leave you frozen to death.
In addition to climbing rock faces, snowboarding down mountains, and zip-lining across chasms, you’ll also have hang-gliders that you can use to traverse the area, as well as monster trucks to commandeer in order to get out of some tight binds.
Traditional first-person combat is still a high-priority in the game, along with riding snowmobiles to get around the map.
If you’re interested in checking out Ring of Elysium you can do so right now by visiting the Steam store page.
