In June of last year Illogical Games unveiled their take on the popular battle royale genre with a game they called Mecha Royale Online. They gathered up some beta testers from our forums and for the next several months development was chugging along. Then Apple did a very Apple thing and rejected the submitted version of Mecha Royale Online because the game was apparently a rip off of… Mecha Royale Online. Yes, Apple somehow decided that Illogical’s own game was a copy of itself, and rejected their submission over and over again. It took another several months and a name change to MekaRoyale Online before Apple finally accepted the game and it became available for pre-order in early January. It launched later that month, but its woes didn’t end there, as the game was plagued with a lot of technical issues that killed the launch buzz and enthusiasm of early players. Although Illogical has been dutifully updating and fixing those issues in the months since, it seemed to be too little too late for a game that revolved around an engaged player community.
However, Illogical doesn’t want all of their work to go to waste, and they know they have a solid game that never saw its full potential, so they’re going to give it a second chance. They’re relaunching it under the new name Meka Hunters, and as you can see in this new trailer the game now takes on a third-person perspective as opposed to the top-down perspective of the original game.
What remains is a focus on mech customization and a revamped Pilot upgrading system, as well as a brutal roguelike inspiration that sees you losing everything should you fall in battle. It’s not as dramatic as it sounds, but it does give you an extra incentive not to, you know, die in every game you play. Should this fate befall you you’ll start out the next game as a Pilot, and you can either partner up with other Pilots to take down the more powerful mechs, called MEKA in this game. Or you could just try and kill those lowly Pilots, it’s up to you! Meka Hunters will also feature an improved Mission system that works in single-player and multiplayer, an update to the Battle Royale map, and a new biome to explore.
Illogical hopes to avoid the problems that plagued the launch of MekaRoyale Online, and so they’d like to get people testing Meka Hunters before its planned release in November. If you want to get in on this testing then head over to the forums to find a public Testflight link to the beta, and then put this puppy through the wringer. And if you were one of the handful of loyal players of the original, Illogical promises that “all your progress will be carried over to the new game along with any IAPs that you have spent on MekaRoyale Online." Hopefully by the time its expected November 13th release date rolls around, Meka Hunters will be ready for the masses and will be the fun little mech battler we all knew it could be.
