Rumbleverse, a pro wrestling battle royale, announced at TGAs 2021

This is the next evolution of battle royale. Rumbleverse, a 40-player “brawler royale” from The Extinction maker Iron Galaxy. Revealed during Thursday’s Game Awards Rumbleverse This is the city of pro-rasslers in zany costumes, who pile-drive one another until they are all dead.

Yes, they are. RasslersNot wrestlers. “The day that we were first jamming on the concept, Chelsea [Blasko] our co-CEO, she just goes, ‘We should do rasslin’!’,” said Adam Boyes, Iron Galaxy’s other co-CEO since 2016. “Just like that, right? And then we just started, like, ‘What would happen in a world where a wrestling match could break out anywhere on planet Earth?’”

Rumbleverse, Epic Games published the title for PlayStation 4 and Xbox 5, as well as Xbox Series X. It features battle royale elements such parachuting onto a map and collecting loot, power-ups and keeping to a narrow area. But because there are no guns — “except the ones attached to your arms,” says lead designer Adam Hart — Iron Galaxy’s developers hope the fighting will mOre engaging and more entertaining than the fast-twitch, shoot-or-be-shot immediacy of Fortnite or PUBG battlegrounds.

“When you see somebody in this game, they’re not a threat to you just because you’ve seen them,” Hart said. “You can kind of watch them fight or have a, you know, emote conversation with them across rooftops.” Of course, at some point they’ll start throwing down. Although sneak attacks may be possible, this type of combat is usually mutually initiated.

Iron Galaxy estimates that most events take 12 to 15 minutes for a winner. Hart stated that the ring contracts faster to make up for any inactivity and to force fighting on those who are trying to avoid a fight. The game’s map, “Grapital City,” is quite large — but more importantly, it has a lot of verticality. This map adds a great deal of visual appeal to fights. It also provides more power than the moves you land from. Way The top rope is higher than the bottom.

I saw Hart, whose fighter was kitted out in a tuxedo under a karate gi, with a full-head cat mask (customization, of course, is very important here) pull out an old-school belly-to-back suplex on a clown (another dev’s costume), landing it from what looked like the observation deck of the Empire State Building.

“How often do you guys imitate Jim Ross, by the way?” I asked.

“Every day!” Boyes laughed. “For the past couple of years!” Hart added.

Eliminations are a simple case of draining another player’s health bar, which can be replenished or buffed by the power-ups strewn about Grapital City. Hart, who drank protein powder to stay in shape, also picked up weightlifting magazines. There’s also plenty of roasted poultry, the international sign of video game health since Castlevania and Gauntlet. It’s available from a drive-thru window for “Squatch Chicken: The Home of Slow-Squatted Chicken.”

“[The cook] has all the chicken on a squat rack, and he just dips it into the fire,” Hart explained.

Other pick-ups supply perks or modify one of three core attributes — arms (power), core (health), and legs (stamina). You can create a match to-match character that emphasizes specific areas of your wrestling skills. Hart’s character, in the playthrough, went 3-5-2, for example, with his core being the top attribute. But a max-stamina fighter could do comparable damage per second with a flurry of lesser attacks — and I saw plenty of chained, juggling strikes that fighting game fans will recognize.

“One thing we found out is that a lot of people that are crazy-good platform players, like Mario, Crash, Spyro fans, became the best players, very quickly,” Boyes said. “So it’s as much, I think, about how you move around the world as it is your offensive integrity.”

There are many melee weapons, such as baseball bats or folding chairs. But as Hart pointed out, anything a player can hold can also be knocked from their hands (and used) — weapon or power-up. This means that you can also use the can to make throwing strikes.

Grapital City’s environment also presents tactical possibilities for players, too. No one can swim, so if the circle is closing around an area with water, players can get rung out quickly even if they’re at maximum health. Being outside the circle doesn’t inflict damage, as it does in Fortnite, but it does start a 10-second countdown, akin to disqualification matches in real pro rasslin’. (Not that pro rasslin’ is real. You know, the real-life.

Other wrestling tropes include a perk that revives a player after they’ve been counted out (that is, when their health has been fully drained), much like the scripted reversals and comebacks in epic-length wrestling matches.

“What I love about this is, I see someone, and I see a series of choices for me,” Boyes summarized. “Do I have enough stuff that I’ve picked up? Are my stats good enough? What is the one thing I really need to do? Are you able to follow him around? Do I have to sort of follow them? Do I have to run and get my health so that they can come back?

“I don’t want to say it’s casual, but because there’s so much depth to the combat, it makes it less pressure,” Boyes said, “but more, you know, just more fun to experiment and try new things.”

Rumbleverse kicks off a “First Look” gameplay event on Friday, Dec. 10, available to a limited number of players (the game’s official website has registration information and more details). Iron Galaxy will launch Rumbleverse in early access on the Epic Games Store on Feb. 8, 2022, as well as on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X through those consoles’ marketplaces. Rumbleverse Iron Galaxy stated that the platform will allow for cross-platform progression and play.