Who needs 3D? ZombsRoyale.io boils down Battle Royale

It's sometimes easy to forget that not everyone has a PC designed for playing games, and (until recently) many of the big Battle Royale shooters have required pretty beefy hardware in order to get the most out of them. Enter ZombsRoyale.io, distilling the absurdly popular genre down to its purest elements to present them in free, browser-based form.

ZombsRoyale.io even follows in the footsteps of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds with a pointlessly fiddly name. Despite sharing an engine with the popular Zombs.io (a zombie survival sandbox), ZombsRoyale contains no undead, just 99 other players gunning for the top spot.

Watch on YouTube

The launch of ZombsRoyale seems well timed, coming less than a month after our piece on the seemingly endlessly rising popularity of '.io' games, a sub-genre of multiplayer browser titles typified by their ultra-minimalist graphics and accessible controls.

Update: And Alice points out that this isn't the only .io game to take on Battle Royale, or even the first one we've featured.

ZombsRoyale, while a little more complex than the likes of Agar.io, remains simple enough to pick up and play despite containing just about everything you'd expect from a modern Battle Royale shooter. The anarchic lobby screen, the airdrop phase and a focus on clever positioning rather than run-and-gun action. While hiding under foliage, you are effectively invisible until you attack, and buildings provide full visual cover to anyone not in the same structure or peeking in through a window.

It's a very straightforward take on Battle Royale, admittedly. No teams, and (at present) no customization, so every little player-blob shares the exact same skin(?) colour. Given the lack of armor or clothing items, I like to think that these little pink circle-folk are naked and absurdly well armed; the game does seem especially generous in doling out automatic shotguns and rocket launchers.

ZombsRoyale.io is out now and free to play in your browser here.