After annihilating the competition on the card game front (seriously, throw away your Cards Against Humanity box and pick up Joking Hazard instead), Cyanide & Happiness decided to tackle the last-man-standing genre.
We managed to get in on the latest alpha gameplay test and are pleased to report battle royale fans have another killer entry to look forward to soon.
With a whole new approach to this already-crowded genre, Rapture Rejects offers some hope that the battle royale bubble may not be popping, especially if more innovative entries like this show up to keep the formula from going stale.
Offended Mode: Activate!
If you couldn’t tell by the title, Rapture Rejects puts you in the role of someone who missed the rapture and was left behind on Earth. The only thing left to do is horribly murder as many of your sinful brethren as possible to impress God with a wicked kill count.
You immediately know that you’re in for a good time during character creation when you un-check the “dong” box and your avatar gapes in open existential horror at the area where his genitals should be.
The game’s post-rapture hijinks had me thinking of the Guilty Remnant from The Leftovers, so of course, my avatar was wore all white, and I just assumed he chain smokes and bothers everyone silently.
This is not a game for the easily offended…
When you finally get into a match, there is plenty that will be familiar for battle royale aficionados. For example, sound continues to play a surprisingly important role for an isometric, top-down game as you listen for sprinting players or gunshots in the distance.
Of course, you can play mind games by closing doors to looted buildings, and there’s the threat of the closing circle (which this time around is Armageddon lava forcing the homicidal rejects ever closer together).
…or for religious folks who can’t handle some good old blasphemy.
Re-Thinking The Battle Royale Style
Switching from 3D, third-person mode to a 2D, isometric style results in some changes you might not expect. Since you are looking down at the map, each player has a wider field of vision than in a typical battle royale game.
You can usually see enemies when they run into your area of the screen, but that issue has been handled with some clever gameplay tweaks. The map zooms in and out as you move from streets to wide open areas, and you can’t see in or out of buildings (although you can hear running and reloading from outside).
A series of satellite dishes is strewn across the post-apocalyptic landscape, which can be used to see larger segments of the map, but activating them leaves you vulnerable for a few seconds.
Weaponry in Rapture Rejects has undergone a radical redesign as well to fit in with the typical Cyanide & Happiness tone. For example, the game’s SMGs and shotguns are replaced with the spork rifle, CD launcher, nail gun, toaster full of knives, and explosive F-bomb.
The blunderbuss and the spork rifle are where its at,
and I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise
Sadly, you don’t get to choose your landing location at this stage of the alpha, and players instead just appear randomly across the map.
This more randomized take on battle royale leads to some truly zany situations. In one alpha match, everyone found guns galore, but there wasn’t enough ammo, so each player was frantically throwing F-bombs and then rushing up to punch each other to death.
Echoing the bush from Fortnite, RR‘s disguise kit was easily the best item for sneaky players. Hiding as a box or chair in the corner of a room with an un-opened chest became my go-to strategy for racking up kills on unsuspecting players.
Pay no attention to this inconspicuous box in the middle of the room
The Bottom Line On Rapture Rejects Alpha
As an alpha playtest still in active development, there were, of course, crashes and missing effects (the F-bomb in particular was pretty hit or miss when it came to explosion graphics).
Those are things that will surely be fixed, but there is an issue that may be more of a cause for concern — RR only features groups of 40 players, which is quite a bit lower than Fortnite’s 100 or Realm Royale’s 80 player death matches. At this point, it’s unclear if that number is going to stay put or if larger matches will become available later down the line.
The problem with smaller matches in a more niche game is that there will be a tendency for players who know each other to group up to win, which goes against the spirit of a last-man-standing game. This was such a big issue that the developers repeatedly stated in emails and chats ahead of the playtest that anyone caught grouping would be immediately banned.
Small group size and alpha bugs aside, Rapture Rejects is a very solid (and hilarious) new take on the battle royale genre, and it just may convince more adventurous players to move away from the bigger titles.
Rapture Rejects is just one of 11 battle royale games coming soon that you should be keeping your eye on. Check out the master list of impending BR games here and strap into the battle bus for a killer good time!
