Here's the trailer for Tencent's battle royale with snowboards coming to Steam next week

In Ring of Elysium you're a tourist—one of a hundred—at a mountain resort when a terrible winter storm rolls in. There's only one rescue chopper left and it can only carry four people as the storm's freezing circle closes around you. You know what that means: battle royale. The game from Tencent (previously called Europa) is free-to-play, and arrives on Steam September 19—though the store page currently appear to be restricted in Europe and parts of Asia.

The trailer above (if you can see it) shows the snowy, mountainous region and how you'll get around in it using hang gliders, ziplines, off-road vehicles, snowmobiles, and snowboards. Hypothermia is a threat, and apparently avalanches are too. "The game world will change dynamically as the disaster progress," claims the store page.

The scenario ultimately feels a bit more grim, somehow, than the standard post-apocalyptic competition that usually accompanies a battle royale game. Maybe it's just the idea of a bunch of vacationing snowboarders instantly turning on one another with sniper rifles and machineguns to gain a seat on that last chopper. Couldn't they just huddle together for warmth instead?

Christopher Livingston
Senior Editor

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.