Civilization VI tries to cash in on battle royale craze with new Red Death mode

Firaxis and 2K, in an attempt to take advantage of the battle royale craze that has gripped the video game industry, has added elements of the genre to Civilization VI with the new Red Death mode. Red Death, which was added to Civilization VI in its September 2019 update, is an online, 12-player mode that features factions created after a post-apocalyptic event, instead of historical political leaders. In Red Death, instead of guiding society to achieve milestones, players will lead a faction in its bid to escape the planet before it is wiped out by the radioactive storm that the mode is named after. Each faction starts with one civilian, one infantry unit, and one machine gun unit, and will fight against other factions as they race for the one spacecraft that will save them from the Red Death. The radioactive storm grows every few turns, shrinking the playable space. There will be a Safe Zone ring on the map, while the Red Death tracker in the top-left part of the screen will show how many turns until the Safe Zone ring shrinks, and how much damage units will take if they find themselves inside the storm. Meanwhile, players will be growing their factions to keep their last civilian alive, as they will be defeated if they lose all their civilians. To gain new units and supplies, players may rummage through city ruins, clear raider camps, and collect supply drops that will appear near the edges of the Safe Zone ring. Red Death matches, which will typically take 15 to 50 minutes each depending on the number of players and their skill, resembles the last man standing battle royale matches of games such as Fortnite and Apex Legends. There are multiple teams fighting over limited resources, while the play area shrinks over time to force the remaining players to go near each other. It was difficult to imagine how a strategy game would be combined with battle royale, but Civilization VI‘s Red Death mode manages to pull it off. The September 2019 update for Civilization VI, in addition to introducing the Red Death mode, made some balancing tweaks, fixed certain bugs, and updated the game’s World Builder. When searching for a new shooter to check out, whether it be the best FPS games on PS5, the best FPS games on Xbox Series X, or the best FPS games on PC, battle royale games will always be on the list. This new subgenre exploded in popularity after PUBG showed how much potential there was in the format of dropping into a map with a hundred other players to scavenge for supplies and fight to be the last man (or team) standing. Since then, tons of new games have attempted to refine and reinvent the genre with some standout successes and some colossal failures. We’ve hit the point where almost every genre has a battle royale to try, with most being cross-platform games and free-to-play. If you’re on the hunt for a new battle royale game to test your survival skills in, we’ll show you which ones are worth dropping into. The battle royale genre is crowded, but there are some upcoming video games that have the potential to make it on this list when they launch. Fortnite is literally the gift that keeps on giving. With so many updates bringing big changes to the game, I don’t blame anyone that can no longer keep up with the live-service juggernaut. How could you after Epic recently added a full Rocket League spinoff, a recreation of Rock Band, and a Minecraft-like Lego adventure to the mix? For me, though, those can’t completely overshadow the classic Battle Royale playlist that made Fortnite such a hit in the first place — especially since that mode got some great updates of its own in its latest chapter. The Vondel map in Call of Duty: Warzone is one of the best battlegrounds in the history of the battle royale genre. It’s a small-scale, densely packed map with a wide variety of points of interest (POIs) that feel distinct. Modeled after European cities, Vondel is a feat of level design as it simultaneously feels fun and functional. It’s a city that you can truly imagine as a real place, with a slew of different shops to enter, a canal, and even a water taxi service that moves throughout the map. But behind the scenes, there are countless design choices that help the flow and pacing of the map. To get a better sense of just what makes this map work so well, I spoke with Beenox Senior Level Designer Fred Wilson and Lead Artist Guillaume Alain. The duo revealed how Vondel’s composition seeps into the players’ subconscious, with intuitive design choices that work better than any Warzone map that’s come before.
Pacing is king