Darwin Project vs TIO: Battlegrounds Royale
Darwin Project
Darwin Project is an early access, third-person battle royale game that combines the game show-theme from The Culling with the unique art style which made Fortnite Battle Royale so easily recognizable. Unlike most battle royale games where you'll have to compete against 99 other players to survive, this game only has 10 players, including yourself. However, the game spices things up with a ton of challenges, much like those featured in the Hunger Games, that are designed to push you to your limits.Not to mention, the game adds a nice tracking mechanism. Players in the game show will leave clues when they pass by an area and you can use those very clues to determine where your prey is heading to or hiding in. There are plenty of fun power-ups that you can collect, including temporary invisibility. Although you can't craft new weapons, the bow and shovel that you get can be upgraded to increase their deadliness.
Best yet, you can also play as the Director of the entire game show. As the Director, your goal is not to survive but to hype things up enough for the crowd to go wild. You are managing an exciting game show, after all. With feedback from the audience, you can decide which zones to drop a nuke on or which zone to freeze over, or even when to drop a "care package" for the participants to fight over.
Darwin Project manages to breathe new life into the slowly-stagnating battle royale genre. It is definitely a fun, thrilling and unique competitive MMO - one that fans of battle royale would just love to play.
TIO: Battlegrounds Royale
TIO: Battlegrounds Royale is the standalone battle royale game mode for the mobile survival game, Thrive Island. Set in a pretty huge open world where you can craft a large variety of items and build shelters or even big buildings as a base of sorts at night. This game has a lot more "survival" gameplay rather than the somewhat intense "battle royale" fights since you are expected to gather resources and scavenge loot just so you can have the best gear to prepare you for the final fight for the title of victor royale!Unlike other battle royale games that have the iconic map-shrinking feature, this game did away with that. Instead, you need to hunt the land for your opponents, which may take awhile, but can be fun when you catch someone by surprise. Interestingly, the game even has a zombie mode where you can turn your slain foes into zombies. Not sure how this fit into the battle royale gameplay though.
All in all, TIO: Battlegrounds Royale feels a lot like a hardcore survival game rather than a battle royale mainly because it places emphasis on building a good shelter, gathering raw resources (as opposed to finding ready-made items) and well, crafting. The game is also a work-in-progress so you can expect a less-polished game that could use your feedback to improve.