Ubisoft revealed their upcoming battle royale game, Hyper Scape, in a livestream yesterday and they shared a bunch of juicy details with us. Here’s all you need to know to get ready for the game’s launch this upcoming July 12.

Game Overview

At launch, Hyper Scape is going to be a battle royale featuring solo and squad game modes. These modes will be called Solo Crown Rush, and Squad Crown Rush, respectively. The reason they have this name is because of the unique victory conditions in this game. Specifically, while players can win by eliminating all enemies, as is the case in most battle royales, they can also win by taking the crown that spawns in the last safe circle, and holding it for 45 seconds.

Every match will consist of 100 players in solo, or 99 players divided into 33 squads of 3 contenders in Squad Crown Rush. The game’s setting is unlike any other we’ve seen before, considering that Neo Arcadia, the name of the virtual city in which the matches take place, is 100% an urban environment with numerous buildings, skyscrapers, and other structures that favor a cat & mouse style of combat, with a keen focus on vertical movement. There are no open fields nor overly large spaces here like in other battle royales, which means that battles are always fast-paced, chaotic, and with plenty of running and gunning.

This style of gameplay is complemented by the many movement options available to the players since they can sprint around, perform double jumps, and even dashes to get across buildings and other perilous platforms.

From what we saw in the livestream yesterday, there are many different types of weapons, just as you’d expect. Some of these include things like your standard assault rifles and SMGs, as well as heavier weapons like energy launchers that powerful, slow-moving projectiles that explode on contact with an enemy or surface. The interesting part here, however, is the weapon upgrade system, which we’ll talk about in a bit. Suffice to say, the weapon and inventory systems have been streamlined considerably and adapted to the game’s fast-paced rhythm.

Welcome to Neo Arcadia!

Regardless of the game mode, players will descend onto the map via their personal deployment pods. They can land in literally any location of their choosing, and aren’t limited to the few areas that are in the plane’s general trajectory like in other battle royale games. This means that every spot in the map is potentially a danger zone.

Neo Arcadia is a small map, of only 1×1 kilometers. To put things into perspective, Call of Duty’s Warzone map is around 3×3 kilometers, while PUBG’s Erangel map is a whopping 8×8 kilometers large; Hyper Scape’s map is tiny in comparison!

However, what it lacks in surface area, it makes up for in verticality as there are countless houses, skyscrapers, and other large buildings that players can enter to take cover or to chase their enemies down. This urban environment lends itself to lots of cat & mouse gameplay as players can quickly escape their attackers by running inside a building with lots of corridors and turn things around by quickly ambushing their pursuers.

Instead of regular circles like in other battle royales, which progressively shrink as the match progresses and hurt the players that are outside of their bounds, Hyper Scape has decaying zones that completely collapse after a certain time. This effect looks like something straight out of TRON as the areas look as if they are being derezzed. Players who don’t manage to get to safety before an area decays completely will take damage and eventually die. An added effect here is that collapsed areas lose their colors and makes it easier to spot running enemies that are rushing into the safe zone

When it comes to looting, Hyper Scape follows the example of their counterparts by making players pick up all their gear from the map. These pieces of equipment are found as regular drops that are scattered around the map, or even hidden behind barriers that are broken with a melee strike. Similarly, players can also score loot by finding it inside supply crates.

For navigation, all players have improved mobility, at least when compared to other games. Not only can they sprint really fast, but they can also jump high, double jump, wall run, and perform surface and air dashes to get around. Moreover, there are jump platforms littered throughout the map that propel the players high into the sky so they can easily climb tall buildings, reposition themselves, or even escape from would-be attackers.

Weapons and Hacks

There are many different types of weapons in Hyper Scape, including full-auto ARs, powerful sniper rifles, high-power hand cannons, and even energy blasters. Players can also find many different types of Hacks as drops around the map. These Hacks are game changers and function essentially as usable abilities with powerful effects, including things like revealing nearby enemy players, constructing large walls, or even encasing yourself in a large bouncy ball to both protect yourself and get around the map.

The interesting part here is the weapon and Hack fusion system, which functions as this game’s version of weapon upgrading.

Basically, whenever you pick up a copy of a weapon or a Hack you already have, you’ll upgrade your existing items with it, improving their power, magazine capacity, and reducing their cooldown durations, among other positive effects. These elements can be upgraded up to 5 times each.

Squad Cooperation and Communication

Hyper Scape features an intuitive pinging system that allows players to mark locations for important findings such as when you come across a weapon that your team may need, or when you spot enemies in the distance hiding inside a building. With a single press of a button, you can easily alert your teammates of your findings, and coordinate surprise attacks, even when there’s a language barrier.

Moreover, dying in this game doesn’t spell the end for players since they turn into an echo when they fall in battle. This allows them to continue running around, invisible to the enemy teams, and help with scouting and looking around the immediate area for valuable loot. Furthermore, if the players come across a restore point, they can revive their fallen teammates and get them back into the battle.

It’s important to note here that, while we saw some naturally-occuring restore points littered across the map, the players can also force-spawn one by eliminating an enemy team. In other words, there is still an incentive to fight even when one of your partners gets killed since you’ll be able to revive them if you wipe out the enemy squad.

Twitch Integration Into the Gameplay

One of the defining features of Hyper Scape is how Twitch spectators can interact with the game and influence the battle events in every match.

Every so often, the match’s AI will trigger special events such as low-gravity and infinite ammo, at random moments. However, the Twitch audience, who are real-life spectators watching the matches on their computers and phones, can interact with the AI to influence which events are activated. They can also vote on many different events, so it’s important to play the crowd as much as you play the game!

Hyper Scape is going to be an amazing experience. Don’t believe us? Just watch the livestream and see for yourself! What did you think about Ubisoft’s new battle royale? Are you excited for that July 12 launch date? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!