Civilization 6 launches a battle royale mode called Red Death

Battle royale is a pretty fluid and flexible game mode since the concept of a bunch of players fighting to be the last one standing can fit into just about any kind of multiplayer game. So maybe it's not all that shocking that yes, even Civilization 6 is getting a battle royale mode. And it's got nukes!

You don't build civilizations in Civ 6's battle royale: it's far too late for that. Red Death takes place in the post-apocalypse where cities are ruins, the landscape is lifeless, the oceans are acid, and a radioactive storm—the Red Death—is slowly closing in from all sides. It's probably Gandhi's fault.

Rather than build a civ, you manage a post-apocalyptic faction comprised of mobile combat units protecting a civilian unit—and if that civilian unit dies or is captured, you're out of the match. You explore the map with your units, a turn at a time, hoping to gather additional units and level them up with XP. Meanwhile, the Red Death closes around you, forcing you into contact with other players and AI-controlled enemies and outposts in the ever-shrinking safe zone.

Six of us played a match of Red Death last week, and I've played a few more times against the AI. You can read all about it here.

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.