Tencent Battle Royale Game Synced Lets Gamers Hack A Horde Of Zombies For World Domination

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The battle royale genre has exploded in popularity over the last couple of years with titles like Fortnite and PUBG leading the way. Needless to say, many developers are looking to get in on the battle royale free-for-all, and the latest is Tencent Next Studios with the announcement of Synced: Off-Planet.

Synced: Off-Planet puts a new spin on the genre with gameplay that seems to combine inspiration from other fictional works like World War Z and Left for Dead. You compete in a team of three; with two other human players serving beside you. Faced against you will be 45 other human opponents... and around 1,500 AI zombies (called Nanos) in a fight for survival.

Having 48 humans (16 teams of 3) battling it out is hard enough, but throwing in over a thousand Nanos makes for an interesting twist on the game mechanics. And that's where things get interesting. Players have the ability to essentially "hack" the zombies to use at your own disposal. That means that they can be used as weapons to attack other teams and players, or as a distraction tactic.

The main game is split to rounds, which last for roughly 20 minutes, and your goal is to blast through the army of zombies to make it to a solitary dropship. That dropship is then your ticket off the plant to freedom. Now the name of the game makes sense, eh?

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Other things that we've learned about the game is that the map size is static, and doesn't shrink over time like other battle royale games. According to Engadget, teams will also have spawn points where they'll enter the battlefield rather than being airdropped into the action. We hope that you like microtransactions, as they'll play a big part in the game just like other battle royale games, although there is no indication yet if the game will be free-to-play like Fortnite (i.e. no upfront cost to gamers).

NVIDIA is highlighting Synced: Off Planet as one of the latest games to take advantage of GeForce RTX real-time ray tracing, and we have to admit that it does look incredibly good. Ray-tracing effects extend to shadows and reflections including surfaces like water. Unfortunately, at this time there has been no launch date set for Synced: Off-World.

Brandon Hill

Brandon Hill

Brandon received his first PC, an IBM Aptiva 310, in 1994 and hasn’t looked back since. He cut his teeth on computer building/repair working at a mom and pop computer shop as a plucky teen in the mid 90s and went on to join AnandTech as the Senior News Editor in 1999. Brandon would later help to form DailyTech where he served as Editor-in-Chief from 2008 until 2014. Brandon is a tech geek at heart, and family members always know where to turn when they need free tech support. When he isn’t writing about the tech hardware or studying up on the latest in mobile gadgets, you’ll find him browsing forums that cater to his long-running passion: automobiles.

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