Battle royale is coming to tabletop via Kickstarter

The battle royale games trend continues to roll inexorably onward, with board games set to be the next route of expansion. Coming to Kickstarter next month, Last One Standing seeks to replicate the resource-starved gunplay of a battle royale game on a shrinking hex map. It’s an intriguing proposition, especially at its proposed larger player count of 2-8 people. “Just like in the video games the battle royale genre creates unexpected moments but now they are shared in your community of friends,” creator Brendan McCaskell told Kotaku. A Kickstarter for the game is planned to launch on May 1st. 

Each turn, players will vie with each other on an ever-shrinking island. As new supplies are dropped or hexes removed from the game’s modular board, players will move, scavenge for supplies, and attack each other—forcing other players to discard their hard-earned gear. Each game has ten rounds, with each player taking two actions. Though McCaskell says he was inspired by PUBG, Last One Standing’s stylized visuals and characters are much more reminiscent of Fortnite or recently released Radical heights.

Player elimination sounds like a big problem for the game, given its 30-80 minute runtime—nobody likes sitting around for an hour while their friends finish a game. For his part, McCaskell seems very optimistic about the outcome. 

You can follow the game on Twitter or sign up for a newsletter on its website. There’s also a BoardGameGeek page

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.