LawBreakers Developer's Next Title Is A Battle Royale Game, Because Of Course It Is

When Boss Key Productions announced future development for LawBreakers had ceased, the team took that same opportunity to tease a new project that was in development. That was quickly followed by an official reveal of Radical Heights, a battle royale shooter that's now available as an early access game.

Boss Key Productions has made quite a few headlines recently, all but shuttering one game while launching another in quick succession. It's called Radical Heights and, yep, it's yet another battle royale game wherein a bunch of players fight for superiority while snagging gear and taking out the competition.

What's extra wild about how this all went down is that Boss Key Productions only announced a halt on LawBreakers development last week. Their arena shooter arrived last fall and never managed to gain an audience. At the time, games like PUBG were actually pegged as being a big reason for LawBreakers' failure. In short, too many people were playing that runaway hit to ever pay attention to Cliffy B's new gravity-defying shooter.

Last week, Boss Key announced that future development on LawBreakers had stopped, though they did kick around the idea of converting the game to a free-to-play title if their future projects gained some traction. Speaking of which, they teased that a new game was already in development and then proceeded to tease it even further with some bizarre fake adds on social media.

Next thing you know, Radical Heights has been revealed and, just as quickly, it's already in an early testing phase on Steam. Over on the Boss Key blog, they've made it very clear that Radical Heights is a battle royale style game, but with some unique twists. The aesthetics actually look pretty similar to Fortnite, but the team was going for a retro '80s feel with lots of neon colors. It's also worth noting that this is supposed to be set in a game show, hence all of the flashy lights, minigames and piles of cash.

In short, players are battling for superiority, earning money by finding it in the real world or performing feats like taking out other characters. The trick here is that you can spend that in-game currency on loot in the middle of the match, or you can try to get to an ATM and bank it for use in a future match. It looks like anything you lose after getting taken out can be picked up by other players, so there's a risk/reward system at play similar to banking souls in Dark Souls. It's actually a pretty unique concept, so we've got to at least give them some credit for bolting something new onto the 100-player shootout concept.

Not to be too pessimistic right out of the gate, but we can't help but wonder why Boss Key went this particular route. PUBG may not be quite as big as it was back in the fall, but it's still a huge draw. And then there's Fortnite, along with a whole bunch of other battle royale games that have come out of the woodwork in recent months. If they're hoping to get their new game noticed, it might not have been the best idea to jump into an increasingly crowded market with two behemoths already dominating the top of the mountain.