A BEGINNERS’ GUIDE TO ‘BATTLE ROYALE’

A battle royale typically involves up to 100 players battling it out on a large map. The genre began in the form of player-designed modifications to existing survival games.

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) refined the concept as a standalone game, and set the template followed by Fortnite soon after and now by Call of Duty: Black Ops 4‘s Blackout mode.

You start the game unarmed and in the air – onboard a C-130 plane in PUBG or a “battle bus” kept aloft with a hot-air balloon in Fortnite or a CH-47 Chinook helicopter in CoD – and decide when to jump out. Different areas on the map offer strategic advantages, so choosing where to land with your parachute is an important decision that can mean the difference between dying in the first few seconds of the game or making it to the end.

Once you’re on the ground, it’s time to head to the nearest building and start scavenging for weapons, armour, vehicles and other objects to help you survive longer and also make it easier for you to get rid of your opponents.

At the start of each game, the entire map is a “safe zone”, but this soon starts to shrink, driving players towards a randomly selected area of the map as those outside of the zone quickly lose their health.

Unlike most other multiplayer games, once you die in a battle royale, you’re dead for the duration of the match.

If you become the final player or last team standing at the end you can revel in the glory of having defeated dozens of others chasing the same goal.