Free futuristic battle royale FPS
Hyper Scape is a free-to-play battle royale first-person shooter game wherein you have to fight over a much-coveted crown. Developed and published by Ubisoft, this unique last-man-standing game leads you into thrilling action in the futuristic city of Neo Arcadia. Similar to Fortnite and Apex Legends, you get to battle other players in the world and prove your survival skills in this sprawling cityscape of skyscrapers and metro lines.
Welcome to the concrete jungle
The premise of the game centers around Hyper Scape. It is a virtual reality world hosted by a fictional technology company in the far future known as Prisma Dimensions—which may remind you of Ready Player One’s OASIS. This VR world has a popular competitive sport called Crown Rush, and it normally pits up to 100 players in squads of three into the urban cyberspace city, Neo Arcadia. The goal is simple here: either hold the Crown for 45 seconds or eliminate everyone else.
This game is different from most battle royale games, as there are no hero abilities, weapon rarities, or consumables. Instead of a gradually-shrinking poisonous circle, the city’s sectors start to decay and expose you to enemy fire, eventually dealing you damage over time. The Crown only spawns once one sector remains. When you die, you enter Spectator Mode as an “Echo” and must alert your teammates of enemies or places of interest by pinging them. Killing an enemy will open a respawn point, allowing your team to revive you.
Your skills are also much more important here. Upgrading weapons into the next tier requires actually finding duplicates of it on the map, so you should constantly move to collect loot. You can also pick up Hacks, which are abilities like healing, invisibility, and shields that you can equip—and you can fuse these for longer usage durations, too. You can only have two weapons and two Hacks equipped, but upgrading them to higher tiers makes all the difference the longer you fight in the matches.
Is Hyper Scape free?
Aside from this, there’s also no fall damage due to the vertical nature of the map. Sliding is much quicker than normal to help you be on your toes. Plus, you can double-jump pretty high—and this is aided all the more with the yellow bounce pads scattered on the map. Thus, while the game is free for anyone, actually winning a match isn’t going to be easy with this tricky and fast environment. The map design really highlights the individual buildings you can enter and jump around on.
If you want to break away from the Squad gameplay, you can try the solo mode called Dark Haze, which puts you into a fog-filled map with limited weapons and hacks and no Crown to steal. However, the sectors decay much faster, so while you’ll want to be careful with the low visibility, you can’t just dawdle. There’s also the Faction War mode, wherein 96 players are divided into four factions—each with 24 players—and must battle it out to emerge as the rulers of Neo Arcadia.
Another cool thing about this game is that it has Twitch integration, allowing viewers to participate in the matches by voting for Battle Events and Effects if the streamer they’re watching has the Crowncast extension installed. You can then expect random events like Low Gravity, Infinite Ammo, and Reveal to happen and make the game suddenly a bit harder. This lets the audience feel like they’re part of the experience, too.
Beyond the game
Overall, Hyper Scape aims to offer a refreshing take on the battle royale genre. Not only does it enforce team coordination and skillful play rather than relying on abilities and powerful weapons, but it also encourages audience participation so that gameplay streamers can connect better with their fans. This game has lots of competition, unfortunately, but it’s a great recommendation if you want something a bit unique, nonetheless.
