Gamers are putting aside their disdain for crypto games to give a new battle royale, which lets you buy and sell NFTs, a chance.
Off the Grid (OTG) is a free-to-play shooter trending on the PlayStation Store and climbing the Epic Games Store chart.
These days, it’s not enough to slap the battle royale label on a game and hope it becomes the next Fortnite. A hook is necessary — and OTG’s main selling point is cyberpunk mayhem with a story you may care about.
What is Off the Grid?
The game, which is in early access, involves players participating in a future death sport for cyborgs that’s live-streamed for people to gawk at. To win, you’ll need to scavenge robotic limbs that give you the edge on the battlefield, from legs that turn you into The Flash to arms with built-in blades.
You can grab these super-powered appendages from crates littered around the map or from downed players. To make things even more precarious, someone might shoot your fake arms off, or you could lose your new legs after a big fall. It’s a good thing you have a built-in jetpack to stick the landing.
Who is behind the game?
OTG is the brainchild of an independent studio called Gunzilla Games, which features talent from Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, and THQ. That may help to explain why it plays like Apex Legends meets Warzone’s DMZ mode. The developers also roped in acclaimed sci-fi director Neill Blomkamp to help craft the storyline.
The politically charged plot tells of a Pentagon-funded mission to create bio-hacked soldiers, which are shown in live-action shaky cam news reports from dust-caked battlefields that look like Afghanistan.
The game’s vision of a dystopian future lorded over by mega-corporations could have been plucked from one of Blomkamp’s sci-fi epics of haves and have-nots. It also wears its influences on its sleeves; the result feels like District 9 meets The Hunger Games meets The Running Man. As for the cyborgs, they appear to have borrowed their body parts from Chappie, the titular robot in Blomkamp’s underrated sci-fi parable.
Do you need to use crypto to play?
But despite the rich pedigree of its creative team, one feature threatens to derail the entire endeavour. We’re talking about the game's use of crypto, of course.
OTG’s marketplace of skins and weapons essentially runs on Gunzilla’s blockchain-based Gunz platform and token. Players can mint these in-game items as NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) to trade using the cryptocurrency — or flog them on established NFT marketplace OpenSea.
For its part, Gunzilla insists that the crypto element is completely optional, meaning it won’t get in the way of gameplay. If that statement was made to avoid any potential backlash, none seems to have yet materialised.
Why are crypto games derided?
In the past, games with even a whiff of crypto jargon have been met with outright scorn. You’d think web3, blockchain and NFT were anathema to gamers.
The hostility stems from a deep distrust of the crypto and gaming industries. Naysayers point to the scams; the distasteful aura of obscene wealth; the environmental impact; and the general meme-ification of cryptocurrencies. Some players have also grown wary of video game monetisation schemes, given exploitative practices including loot boxes, endless subscriptions, and tiered battle passes.
When the two are combined, it becomes clear why every new crypto game is quickly dismissed as a cash grab. The vociferous pushback has forced major studios including Ubisoft and EA to cancel or give up on NFT and blockchain projects.
That’s not to say that all gamers are anti-crypto. Some, if not many of them, might even hold and trade cryptocurrencies and meme coins. It’s just that a very vocal majority don’t want cryptocurrencies or NFTs anywhere near games.
So, why isn’t OTG being dragged through the mud? Apart from the fact that the game has played down its use of crypto, it might just be a case of good timing. NFT mania was at its peak during the dog days of the pandemic when everyone from Kings of Leon to Adidas to Melania Trump auctioned off their digital assets. Since then, the hype has well and truly died down.
What are people saying about Off the Grid?
Still, OTG isn’t a complete home run. Apart from the focus on cybernetics, the gameplay is standard battle royale fare. You drop into a large map and then loot, slide, and shoot your way to victory.
It also lacks some polish, with players and live streamers calling out its choppy gameplay, input glitches, and missing HUD elements. That can be put down to its early access phase for now, but Gunzilla must iron out the flaws before its official release.
Where can you play it?
OTG is available to download for free on PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC via the Epic Games Store. The game will likely remain in early access until some point next year. By then, it could establish itself as a true Warzone rival or fade into obscurity.
