Splitgate Arena Reloaded's new battle royale mode sounds a lot like Apex Legends, and I can't wait to give it a try

If you take a look at the Steam charts, Splitgate Arena Reloaded isn’t doing particularly well. However, developer 1047 Games refutes that numbers are everything, saying that “Steam charts don’t measure fun” in an official communication. While that’s true, it will be hoping that its new-look battle royale mode, Arena Royale, will bring more players to the recently-reimagined shooter. And, as someone who’s put thousands of hours into battle royale games over the years, I must admit it’s got some interesting quirks that might be worth checking out.

Arena Royale’s modus operandi is, “Less looting, more shooting.” While I enjoy the cadence of a standard battle royale, this makes sense for Splitgate Arena Reloaded’s brand of frenetic portal-hopping action. The first thing you should know is this is much smaller than most other BRs, with just six teams of four players duking it out for the same length of time as a traditional arena match. You can respawn as long as one member of your team is still alive (until the final circle, at least), and from then on it’s pure survival.

This keeps things interesting, and is where Apex Legends has been leaning with its more casual modes like Wildcard in recent seasons. The recent Winter Wipeout update allows multiple teams to use the same respawn beacon and Call of Duty’s Warzone Resurgence mode includes similar rapid redeployments, so maybe getting players back into the action is the flavor of the month for battle royales.

Like Apex, too, Arena Royale does away with a dropship. However, your drop isn’t random as it is in Respawn’s BR. During the warm-up before each round, the lobby votes on which biome the match will take place in and all players drop into the one with the most votes. Presumably teams will deploy away from opponents, but the details are scant.

Those biomes include three returning maps – Drought, Glacier, and Fracture – and a new dilapidated urban map called Outskirts, which should provide more verticality and a change of pace.

Speaking of pace, looting is seamless in Splitgate: Arena Reloaded. Chests open automatically and loot falls to the ground when a player is killed. I hate to sound like a broken record, but again this has shades of Apex’s Wildcard mode, which incorporates similar looting mechanics in order to promote action-packed matches. Wildcard is a surprising amount of fun, and that’s coming from a dedicated ranked grinder, so I’m willing to give Arena Royale a fair turn to see if it can capture some of that frenetic magic.

While there are a lot of similarities to Apex’s casual mode, the core gameplay of Splitgate is remarkably different from the Titanfall successor. These are quality of life improvements, rather than core gameplay mechanics.

Splitgate Arena Reloaded Arena Royale launches with update 2.2 on Thursday, January 22. You can read the full patch notes here.

Away from Arena Royale, Splitgate’s standard arena mode is getting two new maps over the next two weeks. Trihard (groan) is an anti-gravity map set in the clouds, intended to focus more on being fun that for any sense of real competition. Runway covers that side of things, with its Shinjuku-inspired neon streets allowing players to capitalize on great positioning to secure the win.

If the Trihard map didn’t elicit an eyeroll from you, Splitgate’s new LTM will. Teabag Takeover rewards players for, you guessed it, teabagging their opponents. I’ll be honest, this is exactly the sort of ’00s edgelord humor that has put me off Arena Reloaded until now, but if you want to relive the Modern Warfare 2 lobbies of your youth, this is the mode for you.

It’s a testament to Splitgate’s focus that I’m interested in playing Arena Royale at all. It’s taking plenty of inspiration from successful battle royale games and putting its own spin on the genre, too. I hope it succeeds in drawing more players to the game, so I can get quicker matchmaking if nothing else.