Civilization 6: Red Death (Civ's new Battle Royale mode)

Do you like video games? I like video games. Everyone likes video games. And every gamer has at the very least heard of Sid Meier’s groundbreaking Civilization series of video games. Personally, This Gamer has been playing Civ since Civilization 2, and that “just one more turn” addiction mentality still drives me to play Civ every once in a while when life allows. It’s a fantastic series of games, and the newest entry in the series (Civilization 6) was just updated with a new, FREE, battle royale game mode titled “Red Death”.

Battle royale mode? What’s that?
Surely you’ve heard of Fortnite, or at least seen people doing Fortnite dances in WWE or NFL, or out on the street, or in the club or on the International Space Station (I wouldn’t be surprised). Well that’s a battle royale game. In essence, all players need to search an ever-shrinking world for weapons and supplies to battle to be the last player standing. Over time, the play area shrinks and forces players closer together, inevitably leading to battle.

But wait, how does that work with Civilization?
Good question! So typically in Civilization, you spend many many turns exploring the world, building cities, producing buildings and military units, researching new technology, and advancing your government with culture and faith. Also there’s war, lots of war. But that’s a slow process. Civilization is what we call a “4X game” (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate).

In Red Death mode, however, there are no cities to build and no tech tree for upgrades. You start the round with three units: a civilian, an infantry, and a machine gunner. If your civilian gets captured, you’re out of the game.

Simple enough, right? Wrong! The map is constantly closing in on players, smaller and smaller because of the spreading Red Death. Each turn a unit ends in the Red Death eats away at its health. Spend too long and you’ll lose your unit. The water also hurts, so traverse at your own peril!

But fret not, you can acquire more units, including helicopters, tanks, and more civilians, by exploring ruined cities, conquering barbarian encampments, and claiming supplies randomly dropped throughout the map.

Oh, and turn timer is set to 45 seconds. Hope you can plan on your feet, because the last player alive is the winner!

What a cool game mode! It’s fast paced and stressful, but it’s a ton of fun.

This is the kind of fun, quick game that sometimes I just love to play. If I can get some friends together for an hour, we can complete two or three full games, unlike in traditional Civ which can take weeks to finish a single game. And with so many new factions to play, each game is a new experience.

I think this is a great new addition to the Civilization family and look forward to seeing any changes the devs make in the future (or not, it’s already super fun!). Best of all it’s totally free regardless of if you own the base game or all of the expansion packs.

Already have Civ 6? Give Red Death a try!

Sources: Screenshots from the official Red Death reveal video from the Civilization Youtube channel.