Just a week ago we posted about a mobile game from NetEase called 荒野行动, which roughly translated to “Wilderness Survival," that had taken over the top spot in the Chinese App Store. Why was this a big deal? Well, Wilderness Survival is a darn near carbon copy of the unfathomably popular multiplayer battle royale game on desktop called PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, aka PUBG. Ever since PUBG became the most played game in the entire universe over the course of the last few months, several companies have tried to catch a ride on its coattails by making a mobile version of the game. What was crazy about Wilderness Survival is that not only did it mimic PUBG to an uncomfortable degree, but it also came from NetEase, one of the biggest companies in gaming, not some little indie developer. Also, when it hit number 1 in China it unseated the then-current hottest thing in mobile at the time, the MOBA Arena of Valor. A pretty impressive feat.
Anyway, while Wilderness Survival was available in countries outside of China, the game itself was entirely in Chinese. It wasn’t too hard to futz your way through menus and whatnot to be able to play the game, but today this process has become much easier as the game we’ve come to know as Wilderness Survival has officially launched in English under a brand new name: Knives Out (Free). Also interesting is that the previous Chinese language version is nowhere to be found, so it looks like NetEase has pulled that version in favor of the English version moving forward. I’m actually not one of the gazillion people who plays PUBG so it’s hard for me to say whether Knives Out scratches that itch on mobile properly, but if you’ve been waiting for a way to play this game in English then now is your chance. Grab Knives Out for free with the link below and hit up our forums where discussion surrounding the game is taking place.