In August 2022, 934 days since the last major update (Deviled Eggs Update), Realm Royale received not only a new major update but was relaunched (Realm Royale: Reforged) with a fair deal of fanfare and streamer participation.
For long-time fans of the game, it was a happy ending to a months-long community rumour that the development of Realm Royale had resumed, despite the developers officially refusing to comment on any possible revival.
Unfortunately, this excitement was to be short-lived, and being over 2.5 years behind the rest of the genre has proven to be a difficult obstacle to overcome, with development once again slowed down after Realm Royale: Reforged not only failed to surpass the records set by the launch of Realm Royale but swiftly returned to pre-update player counts.
Things would only worsen as 2022 ended and 2023 got underway, with Realm Royale: Reforged having slipped below the concurrent user count of Realm Royale by February 2023, a trend that continues to this day, with Realm Royale: Reforged currently peaking at around 550 players on steam, meaning that it has lost almost 50% of the active player count that Realm Royale enjoyed in July 2022, before the relaunch.
Would Realm Royale have reached these lows with or without the Realm Royale: Reforged update? Most likely, but whenever major changes are made to a niche game, there is always the risk of the core community losing interest, which could very well be the case here, and if I were to venture a guess, a presumption of development, without the added fluff of a relaunch would have fared far better.
Image credit Realm Royale Reforged - Published and developed by Evil Mojo.
While many battle royales offer a way for players to respawn with the help of allies, Realm Royale was the first title which allowed players to revive themselves up to three times per match.
This is accomplished by turning downed players into chickens and tasking them to survive for 15 seconds in chicken form; successfully doing so revives the player with 75% of their health and the contents of their inventory.
While escaping an armed opponent as a defenceless chicken sounds impossible, for players willing to take risks and think outside of the box, escaping your attacker and coming back stronger to avenge your death is a real possibility, and quite frankly feels fantastic.
Image credit Realm Royale Reforged - Published and developed by Evil Mojo.
Realm Royale has often been dismissed as a Fortnite clone, and while the similarities are unmistakeable, Realm Royale, upon launch in 2018, was “ahead of its time” and introduced many concepts and mechanics to the genre that would later go on to appear in titles such as Fortnite, Call of Duty Warzone and Apex Legends.
The following mechanics were present in Realm Royale at launch in June 2018.
While many accuse Hi-Rez and its subsidiaries of “copying someone else’s homework”, it’s intellectually dishonest not to recognise that despite sharing many similarities with other titles, Hi-Rez-owned studios continually bring innovation to whatever genre they invest in, even if that innovation does not guarantee the success of any given title, or in some extreme cases the genre itself.
Image credit Realm Royale Reforged - Published and developed by Evil Mojo.
Taking a page from the Paladin’s Playbook, Realm Royale: Reforged has opted to start selling sexy character skins, and honestly, it reeked of desperation.
When the first thing you are greeted with is a “sexy fish lady” on the first page of the Battle Pass, you know that a title is in serious trouble.
While I have seen more offensive skins, and this is not the first revealing skin in Realm Royale, it still is a bad look for Realm Royale: Reforged, making the most revealing skin in the Battle Pass the very first item to be unlocked, especially when the much cooler looking (and less female form objectifying) buff shark man was an option.
Image credit Realm Royale Reforged - Published and developed by Evil Mojo.
Realm Royale Reforged is a battle royale video game developed and published by Evil Mojo, it was released on 23 August 2022 and it is Free-2-Play.
Realm Royale Reforged is available on the following platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
Evil Mojo is still officially working on the game; however, what plans they have for the future( if any) are unknown at this time, considering that the Paladins developer recently responsible for both Rogue Company and Realm Royale as part of a major restructuring that saw Hi-Rez consolidate many of its smaller studios, before splitting the new combined studios off as their own companies, likely to make a future sell-off easier, and to avoid any single point of failure from bringing down the entire company.
While we do not know how many people play Realm Royale: Reforged across all platforms, the Steam community peaks at around 500 players each day, a far cry from its glory days, which saw Realm Royale peak at over 104k concurrent players in June 2018.
Realm Royale: Reforged Dead is not dead thanks to robust crossplay support; however, it is struggling, and it’s not uncommon to play in matches where real players are an ultra minority, and the vast majority of players are bots, especially during off-peak hours in less popular regions.
Realm Royale: Reforged supports:
Realm Royale: Reforged offers the following matchmaking options:
The Realm Royale: Reforged in-game store sells:
The following peripherals are officially supported:
Realm Royale: Reforged is rated PEGI 12+ and contains the following:
Realm Royale: Reforged is a decent game, and robust crossplay support helps to keep it afloat; however, there is no real reason to play Realm Royale: Reforged when Fortnite exists, as after 2.5 of no updates and an ultimately unsuccessful relaunch Realm Royale: Reforged is a worse game in almost every way.
