''Totally Accurate Battlegrounds'' (''TABG'') is a

multiplayer A multiplayer video game is a video game in which more than one person can play in the same game environment at the same time, either locally on the same computing system (couch co-op), on different computing systems via a local area network, or ...

battle royale Battle Royale may refer to: * Battle royale, or battle royal, a fight among many combatants ** Battle royal (professional wrestling) Fiction and literature * Battle royale genre, a narrative genre of films, manga, anime and visual novels inspire ...

video game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...

developed by Swedish studio Landfall Games, and a spin-off of ''

Totally Accurate Battle Simulator ''Totally Accurate Battle Simulator'' (''TABS'') is a physics-based strategy video game developed and published by Landfall Games. An alpha version of the game was initially released in 2016 to a small audience. The game was released for macOS ...

'' (''TABS''). Similarly to how ''TABS'' parodies the battle simulator genre of video games, ''TABG'' is a

parody A parody is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satire, satirical or irony, ironic imitation. Often its subject is an Originality, original work or some aspect of it (theme/content, author, style, e ...

of the battle royale genre, primarily titles such as ''

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds ''PUBG: Battlegrounds'' (previously known as ''PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds'') is a 2017 battle royale video game published by Krafton, and developed by Krafton's PUBG Studios. The game, which was inspired by the Japanese film '' Battle Ro ...

'' and ''

Fortnite ''Fortnite'' is an online video game and game platform developed by Epic Games and released in 2017. It is available in seven distinct game mode versions that otherwise share the same general gameplay and game engine: '' Fortnite Battle Roy ...

'', and features exaggerated player and weapon physics. The game was released on

Steam Steam is water vapor, often mixed with air or an aerosol of liquid water droplets. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization. Saturated or superheated steam is inv ...

on June 5, 2018.

Gameplay

The game plays similarly to other games in the battle royale genre, in which players must traverse a shrinking safe area, collecting weapons, blessings, and grenades along the way in order to fight and eliminate opponents, and aim to be the last remaining player or team. However, the game is differentiated by a

physics engine A physics engine is computer software that provides an approximate simulation of certain physical systems, typically classical dynamics, including rigid body dynamics (including collision detection), soft body dynamics, and fluid dynamics. I ...

which produces exaggerated character motions when moving or using weapons (including stretching limbs and exaggerated knockback when using guns), the ability to dual-wield weapons, a self-constructing wall functioning as the game's "storm," and a wide array of weapons directly pulled from or influenced by weapons in the real world. ''Totally Accurate Battlegrounds'' features a multi-tier "blessing" system which players can utilize by collecting rings of various colors (said colors depicting the tier the blessing falls under) and placing them in one of 3 inventory slots. Blessings provide various benefits, some examples of which include increased movement speed, faster weapon firing speed, increased

health points Health is a video game or tabletop game quality that determines the maximum amount of damage or fatigue something takes before leaving the main game. In role-playing games, this typically takes the form of hit points (HP), a numerical attribute ...

, and health regeneration.

Release

''Totally Accurate Battlegrounds'' was initially intended to be released on April 1, 2018, as an

April Fool's Day April Fools' Day or April Fool's Day (rarely called All Fools' Day) is an annual custom on the 1st of April consisting of practical jokes, hoaxes, and pranks. Jokesters often expose their actions by shouting "April Fool " at the recipient. Mas ...

joke, serving as a spin-off of its previous game ''

''. However, its release was delayed to June 5, in order to address server problems with the game. Landfall stated that the game would be available for free for 100 hours after its release on

, after which it would cost $5. On April 1, 2021, the game became free to play. In March 2020, Landfall announced that they would slowly begin to develop ''TABG'' again, but clarified that they were still working full time on ''Totally Accurate Battle Simulator''. In the announcement, they showed off several screenshots of the new map in development. On April 6, 2020, Landfall released a beta version featuring the new map. In the following months, they released multiple temporary betas showcasing improvements to the map, new weapons, new vehicles, and performance optimizations. In April 2021, the game became

free-to-play "Free-to-play" ("F2P" or "FtP") video games are games that give players access to a significant portion of their content for free. The term "free-to-play business model" or simply, "free-to-play model", refers collectively to business models tha ...

. In February 2022, Landfall Games announced that they have stopped developing further updates for the game following a steady decrease in the size of the playerbase. On June 26, 2023, Landfall announced that the TABG servers had been experiencing a

DDoS attack In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyberattack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host conne ...

. This closed the servers for an indefinite amount of time, until the developers fixed the vulnerabilities with their servers. On August 17, 2023, the servers went back online.

Reception

Kotaku ''Kotaku'' is a video game website and blog that was originally launched in 2004 as part of the Gawker Media network. Notable former contributors to the site include Luke Smith, Cecilia D'Anastasio, Tim Rogers, and Jason Schreier. History ...

'' felt that ''Totally Accurate Battlegrounds'' was both a parody of and homage to the genre, describing the average match as beginning with "madcap rushes of wacky, wavy-arm-flailing players who scramble for weapons or just flat-out slapfight each other to death", and that its "haphazard" combat "manages to make each new encounter feel surprising and high-stakes". ''

Rock Paper Shotgun ''Rock Paper Shotgun'' is a British video game journalism website. It was launched in July 2007 to focus on PC game, PC games and was acquired by Gamer Network, a network of sites led by ''Eurogamer'', in May 2017. History ''Rock Paper S ...

'' noted that despite "wacky physics" being a "tired joke", the game did provide several unique features over other games in the genre, including dual-wielding of guns, a rapidly-constructing wall to serve as the barrier for the safe area rather than an encroaching "storm", as well as not depending on

microtransaction Microtransaction (mtx) refers to a business model where users can purchase in-game virtual goods with micropayments. Microtransactions are often used in free-to-play games to provide a revenue source for the developers. While microtransactions ...

s to obtain cosmetic player skins. However, it was noted that matchmaking times for games were slow due to its smaller player population in comparison to ''

'' and ''

''. As of August 2018, the game was the 18th most popular game on

, with over 27,000 players.

References

External links

* {{Official website, landfall.se/totally-accurate-battlegrounds/ 2018 video games Battle royale games First-person shooters Landfall Games games Multiplayer video games Open-world video games Parody video games Physics-based video games Video games developed in Sweden Windows games Windows-only games