If you’re a fan of dystopian sci-fi like The Running Man or The Hunger Games, you know the scene. A group of contestants will be fighting to the death at the behest of some horrible overlord, but the action will constantly cut back to the faceless workers in “The Control Room,” who tirelessly work to add chaos to the arena (usually while some plucky resistance group plots to take them down).
Now, Alawar Premium and Blindfold have taken this pretty established locale and tweaked it for their new top-down battle royale, Watchers.
In Watchers, players will do battle with their friends and neighbors in an “arena” that looks a lot like a suburban housing development. But combatants eliminated from the game will be able to return as “Watchers” who can change the course of a match by deploying anomalies against the remaining players:
Watchers is a free-to-play Battle Royale top-down shooter where killed battlers enter a unique Watcher game mode. Watchers bet on their favorite battlers and influence the course of battle through experiments. The fewer battlers remain on the map, the more Watchers are out there ready to execute different experiments and turning the tide of the battle.
An Open Beta for Watchers is now available to download for the PC through the game’s official website, and interested participants can jump into a match everyday (at specified times) between now and August 4.
The first trailer for Watchers has been embedded above.
