Evil Dead: The Game gets a new 'Splatter Royale' mode

As of its last update, multiplayer horror game Evil Dead has a new mode that's not quite battle royale, but instead is being called "Splatter Royale". Up to 40 players fight to be the last deadite standing, choosing from uglied-up deadite versions of the game's existing Survivor and Demon characters.

As well as scavenging for loot it can be earned through special events, some of which demand you take on elite or boss NPCs. At the end of each round you advance up Splatter Royale's four skill trees, which let you get better at being an Assassin, Butcher, Commando, or Marksman.

The same update also adds two new weapons. The grenade launcher does pretty much what you'd expect, i.e. it launches grenades that explode, while the scythe looks like a particularly brutal limb-lopper that can sever legs and heads.

Coinciding with the release of Splatter Royale is a DLC pack called the Immortal Power Bundle, adding a new Survivor named Ruby Knowby. She's based on the character from Ash vs Evil Dead played by Lucy Lawless, who returns to voice Ruby in-game. She has the ability to eat souls, strengthening her aura and charging up her unique, which sets off an AoE blast that hurts bad guys and heals good guys. She can also regenerate, boost her weapon damage, and boost her poison resistance. The bundle also comes with premium outfits for the Puppeteer Demon, Kelly, Pablo, and Ash, who gets a "party animal" Hawaiian shirt.

Evil Dead: The Game scored an 85 in our review at launch, with Luke Winkie saying, "There are so many fast-paced decisions to make, so many strategic wrinkles to consider, that a round of Evil Dead often leaves me feeling as exhausted as I do after a white-knuckle StarCraft duel. Trust me, I mean that as a compliment."

In other Evil Dead news, the fifth movie in the series, Evil Dead Rise, is due out on April 21. Directed by Lee Cronin (who directed 2019 horror movie The Hole in the Ground), it stars Alyssa Sutherland and Lily Sullivan.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.