To zero fanfare, Ubisoft has launched Wild Arena Survivors, a fresh battle royale from the company designed for mobile. It would seem the game saw some press back in June with a beta that ended in July, as the title ramped up to its global release. Well, today's release day, which means this isometric 40-player battle royale is ready for the masses. As you'd expect, collectible characters are very much a thing, and you'll get to grind your days away as you upgrade them one by one. There's also a heavy focus on survival gameplay, with a multitude of modes available, including a solo mode for all you hardcore survival fans out there. Still, the lack of marketing for this game and its silent release is pretty telling, so tread carefully.

The trailer above offers a quick glimpse of Wild Arena Survivors in action. As you can see, it offers the typical mechanics of a battle royale, from dropping onto an island, to collecting an assortment of characters. Seemingly the game offers an isometric view with pre-rendered backgrounds to keep performance on par for a selection of Android devices, though the skeptic in me wonders if Ubi simply repurposed some random survival game engine, seeing that just about every isometric survival game on the platform looks incredibly similar. While the game does offer some splashy graphics, I'd say they offer the flare inspired by Fornite, which makes sense since Ubisoft is so incredibly late jumping on the mobile battle royale bandwagon.

As for gameplay, there's a selection of modes, including a solo mode, so survival gameplay is certainly on the menu, though if you're interested in the core BR mode, it offers 10-minute matches for up to 40 players at a time. Not only will you spend your time collecting and upgrading characters, but you'll also have to dig for loot to upgrade your weapons and gear. After all, endlessly running a treadmill until you spend money to alleviate the grind is the ultimate goal for a game like this.

Unsurprisingly Wild Arena Survivors is free-to-play, so it contains in-app purchases that range up to $104.99 per item. There are also multiple currencies, and of course, the in-game store is hidden from everyone until they complete the forced tutorial. The best part is the tutorial doesn't explain a thing, so you're literally left standing on an island with zero direction, which might explain why Ubisoft is so silent despite today's release. Still, I did the dirty work to find out what the in-game store contains, and it's a bunch of loot boxes and currency, so the game's paid loot is indeed hidden behind a gambling mechanic. Gross.

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All in all, it seems pretty clear why Ubisoft hasn't put any effort behind today's launch, and that's because Wild Arena Survivors is neither polished nor fun, with awful monetization attached. More than likely Ubi knows this but has decided to silently launch the game to recoup the development costs from players, which is why I have a feeling Wild Arena Survivors isn't going to last for very long. Still, if you'd like to check out one of the worst battle royale games to land on the Play Store in some time, just to educate yourself on how not to develop a game, go right ahead and grab the install from the Play Store widget below.