SHENZEN, March 26 — The developers of PUBG Mobile and Call of Duty Mobile showed a zombie action survival codenamed Vitality and steampunk battle royale Land Next at the Tencent UP 2019 showcase.
Lightspeed & Quantum Studios, one of the Tencent teams that worked on smartphone hit PUBG Mobile, is preparing to launch a zombie survival mobile game currently codenamed Vitality.
Positioned upon foundations of survival, open world, and crafting (and hence Tencent referring to it as an SOC game), the co-operative multiplayer is aiming to bring an increased measure of realism through elements such as camping, fishing, and hunting, refuge construction, changing weather, and a level of physics and chemistry simulation, per the game’s official website.
Opening on a lone post-apocalyptic motorcycle hero who then joins a group of survivors in strengthening and defending a settlement from hordes of zombies, the trailer for Vitality appears to share common ground with both April’s PlayStation 4 exclusive Days Gone and Microsoft’s State of Decay series.
PUBG Mobile recently featured a promotional crossover with zombie survival horror Resident Evil 2, so Tencent understands the appetite for more on a similar theme.
Perhaps of more relevance is that NetEase, whose Rules of Survival and Knives Out have been some of mobile’s most popular unofficial PUBG-style apps, had already tested the waters with its own zombie survival multiplayer, LifeAfter, which released internationally for Android and iOS earlier this year.
Tencent’s Tianmei Studio recently made the news following the announcement that an official, action-oriented Call of Duty Mobile multiplayer was on its way.
Yet Tianmei has also been putting together its own take on the supremely popular Battle Royale genre and is doing so with an ahistorical Chinese twist.
Land Next draws upon a classically Chinese setting imbued with fictional advancements, lending it a steampunk-style theme.
As noted by MMO Culture, local media made comparisons to this year’s computer and console hit Apex Legends; the Land Next trailer has one player character sliding down a sloped rooftop while shooting another player with a machine-action rifle, while another scene presents two three-player squads.
Ziplines, horseback transport, crossbows, handguns, grenades, and mechanical birds also feature. The game is expected on PC.
At the beginning of March, PlayStation China had included its own semi-historical battle royale project, RAN: Lost Islands, within a showcase of titles incubated under the China Hero Project name. — AFP-Relaxnews
