Canadian-made Darwin Project brings new twist to battle royale genre

Darwin Project, the first game from Montreal-based video game developer Scavengers Studio is releasing on Xbox and Steam early access on March 9th, 2018

The game features battle royale type gameplay, but on a smaller scale than popular games like Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds and Fortnite.

Gameplay wise, Darwin Project features a more Hunger Games-inspired style of battle royale, with players taking on a variety of specific roles.

Players can take on the role of a contestant, show director, or spectator. As a contestant, you join 10 other players as you try to be the last surviving player in the Canadian Rockie; as the director you oversee the entire play area and your goal is to spice up the match with commentary and a variety of disruptive powers. Finally, as a spectator, you’re able to watch the game and vote on how the director’s disruptive powers get used.

These new ideas are twists on the existing battle royale style where 100 players get dropped on an island with an ever-shrinking play space area and they fight to be the last player standing.

The Darwin Project looks to ramp up the fun in by adding new features and a bit of a backstory for the players.

“Prisoners turned hunters are thrown into a twisted reality show that has them fight to the death to earn their survival. Ten players must withstand extreme cold, track opponents, craft tools, and set traps to be the last one standing at sunrise,” reads an excerpt from a March 1st Xbox Wire post.

The studio has been running alpha and beta tests for the game since December 2017 in anticipation for this early access launch.

A large part of this game is the spectator role which will take advantage of video game streaming services Xbox live’s Mixer app and Twitch.

The studio has been looking for lots of user feedback by hosting a Discord server and recently doing an ask me anything (AMA) on Reddit.