Indie developers at Hanxiang have jacked into the mainframe and announced Legend Battles, a free-to-play battle royale so ambitious it feels less like a game and more like a full-scale digital universe waiting to be born. Forget everything you know about battle royales. This is a fully realized, hyper-realistic, 400 km² open world designed for one purpose: total, glorious warfare.
We’re talking about a virtual reality so dense it’s populated with “hundreds of futuristic metropolises” and “tens of thousands of metahuman avatars,” a digital playground where the only rule is survival.
A Universe of Absolute Chaos
The scale here is a glitch in the system. Hanxiang promises a world where every single one of the thousands of buildings is fully explorable, with “richly furnished interiors” that aren’t just for show. This Is a living, breathing urban sprawl of chrome and neon, a canvas for pure, unadulterated combat. The developers have also hinted at a mind-bending economic layer, with every single one of those buildings being fully tradable. This is a game where your loot is potentially a piece of digital real estate. This level of ambition from an indie studio is nothing short of a direct challenge to the establishment. They’re not just building a game; they’re building a world, complete with epic air battles and aerial showdowns using thousands of unique weapons and vehicles.
The Vertical War: From Pavement to Orbit
The true innovation of Legend Battles is its insistence on a new dimension of combat: the vertical. Forget fighting on a single, flat plane. The developers promise continuous, fast-paced gunfights where participants can fight simultaneously on the ground, across balconies, on skyscraper roofs, in basements, and even, believe it or not, in orbit. This is vertical gameplay pushed to its absolute limit, a fluid, three-dimensional dance of death. Players will be free to explore a breathtaking diversity of locations, from the grimy underbelly of city slums to sci-fi libraries, alien temples, bustling nightclubs, and even suspended space stations floating just beyond the atmosphere. The world is a lattice of combat, where a sniper on a rooftop is just as dangerous as a commando hidden in the sewers below.
The Drop and the Loot: A Hundred-Player Glitch
Like all battle royales, the chaos begins with a drop. A hundred players are parachuted into the massive game world, a single, decisive moment that kicks off the fight for survival. From there, it’s a frantic race to gear up. Players will need to scavenge for bulletproof vests, helmets, backpacks, and an array of other life-saving gear scattered across the landscape. The environment itself is a hostile player, with unexpected meteorological events like dynamic sandstorms that can obscure vision and change the flow of a fight in an instant. This unpredictable nature adds a layer of strategic depth that forces players to adapt on the fly, a true test of a metahuman’s survival instincts.
Iron and Adrenaline: The Vehicles and the Meds
In this sprawling metropolis, getting around is a weapon in itself. The game’s transport isn’t just a means of getting from point A to point B; it’s a mobile combat platform. Players can pilot everything from high-speed racing cars to armored vehicles and even combat helicopters. Each vehicle model is destructible and can be destroyed by fire, turning every chase and every flight into a high-stakes duel. In a world of continuous shooting, staying patched up is a necessity. The game is packed with an arsenal of medical supplies, from basic bandages and health kits to energy drinks, powerful painkillers, adrenaline injections, and even cardiovascular injectors. These aren’t just simple health buffs; they are the necessary fuel to keep your metahuman avatar in the fight, transforming every tense moment of combat into a desperate struggle to stay alive.
Legend Battles is an absolute monument to ambition, a clear signal from an indie team that they are ready to shake up the entire battle royale genre. Its promise of unprecedented scale, vertical combat, and player-driven commerce makes it one of the most exciting and mind-bending projects on the horizon. The game is slated to be released for PC and PlayStation 5, with more platforms to be announced later. This is a game you don’t want to miss.
Legend Battles launches on October 22, 2025 on Steam.
