While the battle royale among battle royale games continues, an older hat is finally being thrown into the PlayStation 4 ring. Originally announced during Microsoft’s E3 2017 press conference, Darwin Project was launched in an early access state in March 2018 on PC and Xbox One. Now that early access is finally coming to an end, the game will be getting a full release in January 2020, and that means the PS4 version is releasing too.
The free-to-play battle royale game tries to stand out from the crowd in a few different ways. While ten players will survive and fight each other to the death, an eleventh player will control the arena itself. This player has the job of showrunner, spectating the match and causing events to happen that affect the other players. Maybe they’ll take pity on a losing player and give them a nice boon, or perhaps they’ll hate everyone and drop a nuke on them. Either way, it’s a neat twist on the tried and true battle royale last-player-standing genre. Check out the full release announcement trailer below.
Of course, the real question is if there will be enough to set the game apart from massive battle royale mainstays that have come since Darwin Project’s original announcement. Games like PlayerUnknown’s Battleground and Fortnite continue to dominate the genre, rumors say that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare might be getting a battle royale, and they don’t appear to be going anywhere anytime soon. While Darwin Project may not compete in a head to head fight with these other games, by having unique features it may just manage to carve out a niche of fans who will come to enjoy it. We’ll get to see if this will be the case with Darwin Project when it comes to PlayStation 4 next month.
