Wild Arena Survivors – Quick Look

A surprise silent launch of Wild Arena Survivors by Ubisoft caught me off-guard. Without making much off a fuss, not even a single press release, the game appeared on the Play Store seemingly out of nowhere. I installed it and here are my initial impressions.

One might wonder why a reputable developer like Ubisoft would launch a brand new battle royale mobile game without spamming social medias and outlets left and right. It almost seems like they are ashamed of it in some way? You can’t even login with your existing Ubisoft account, the game creates a new account for you. Why….

Maybe because…

Wild Arena Survivors is an isometric battle royale clone of Fortnite. Instead of positioning the camera behind the character, you play from above. That’s about the only thing that makes this game stand out.

Graphics are fine. The game appears to be using some sort of cel-shaded engine and to be honest it both looks good and runs fine even on mediocre hardware. Up to 40 players can play on a single map, but I seriously doubt that number from my own experience. There is no point in explaining all the game modes since they are pretty standard. Most of us will be interested in the survival mode anyway and that can be summarized in two words, Isometric Fortnite.

Now the important part, controls. I don’t know who made the decision, but this kind of abomination should NEVER happen to a mobile game. With the movement stick on your left and action buttons on your right (no, they can’t be remapped), everything seems to be fine. Until you meet your first opponent. Then, suddenly, you realize you can’t move and shoot at the same time? Yes, what could’ve been a sensational twin-stick shooter galore, was butchered to a point where you just can’t comprehend how they came up with this plain-broken shoot to queue idea. External controllers? What’s that?

About the money….

As a free to play battle-royale title, Wild Arena Survivors features premium currency needed in order to open…. wait for it…. loot boxes! Fine, almost all free 2 play games have them, but in this title playable characters are locked inside them. Again, nothing new (Fortnite does it too), except characters here can impact the gameplay with their special abilities.

Should you try it?

Sure, why not. All you need to do is click install and decide if Wild Arena Survivors is worth the ~500mb of data or not. You can jump right in by selecting one of the 3 free characters and start completing daily/weekly quests. You can grind regular coins too in order to perma-upgrade your weapons and such. Cosmetics still require some of that sweet premium currency.

I feel that Wild Arena Survivors is too late to the party. Maybe it will find its audience (if they fix the controls), maybe not – who knows.

Dejan Balalovski