Rec Room, the virtual reality social club on PSVR, Vive, Oculus Rift, is getting yet another popular sport: battle royale. Dubbed “Rec Royale,” this new mode will drop 16 players in the wilderness and pit them against each other as each tries be the last one standing. It’ll come as part of a free update to both PS4 and PC users on June 7th and will allow cross-play between platforms.
According to a post on the PlayStation Blog, players with a Rec Room account will be able to take part of the public alpha test, which will take place from May 25th to May 27th. Developer Against Gravity wants these early players to give feedback on their subreddit and Discord server.
Rec Room’s inventory system had to be overhauled to support this new mode. Weapon quick swapping and storing multiple items were added in order to better facilitate the action inherent to a battle royale. While not as big as other maps in games like Fortnite or PUBG, the Rec Royale map will house forests, mountains, lakes, and other wilderness-like areas. PlayStation Plus subscribers will also get an exclusive paintball burst rifle skin even though PlayStation Plus is not required to play Rec Room online on PS4.
Players will also be to modify and create their own custom battle royale rooms when the update releases. Community creativity was one of the biggest inspirations for adding this mode to Rec Room. Shawn Whiting, Against Gravity’s Community Designer, detailed why battle royale came to the game.
“We’d also like to thank all of our incredible custom room creators who have been using tools like the maker pen and sandbox machine to build their own Rec Room activities over the last few months, many of them inspired by battle-royale-style gameplay,” stated Whiting. “These player-created rooms, along with persistent community feedback, gave us a clear signal that players were hungry for something like Rec Royale.”
