China’s biggest game is adding a battle royale mode
Arena of Valor meets Fortnite
The world’s biggest smartphone game is adding the world’s hottest game genre.
Tencent’s Honor of Kings, known as Arena of Valor in the West, is now adding a battle royale mode.
It’s slightly different from games like Fortnite or PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG), and not just because Honor of Kings isn’t a first-person shooter. In those games, 100 players parachute on an island, scavenge for weapons and fight each other until just one player is left standing.
In Honor of King’s Border Breakout mode, 100 players race to kill a boss monster. But it only appears towards the end of the game, when there are a few players left -- meaning players will have to fight it out to eliminate each other before taking on the boss.
Battle royale has been one of the most popular new trends in games since an early version of PUBG went live last year. It was quickly followed by plenty of clones from Chinese companies on smartphones, before being eclipsed by Fortnite. Just last week the latest Call of Duty game revealed that it will also add a battle royale mode.
But those are all first-person shooters -- while Honor of Kings is a MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena, like League of Legends) and it’s rare to see this game type in other genres.