Rapture Rejects from Explosm Games and Galvanic Games

I’ve been a huge fan of Explosm’s Cyanide and Happiness webcomic since its inception almost 15 years ago. The dedication of the twisted individuals at Explosm is inspiring – how never giving up on your passion can one day produce fruitful results.

These guys have been pumping comic strips out on almost a daily basis for years. All that hard work has turned the brand into the Cyanide and Happiness empire. There’s a paid smartphone app, various digital shorts, podcasts, merch and even a tabletop card game.

After years of fans crying out for a video game, Explosm finally created Explosm Games and teamed up with Galvanic Games to create Rapture Rejects.

End of the World Brawl-For-All

Rapture Rejects is a battle royale game, almost like a small-scale PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS or Fortnite. Players choose their server and are placed in an online lobby. After a short waiting period, players are dropped to a random point in a procedurally generated map.

Players arrive with nothing but their fists. The object of the game is to search the area and the decrepit houses within the map for treasure boxes. The boxes usually contain some sort of makeshift gun or armor, used to take out your opponents and be the last player standing.

The story of Rapture Rejects is already given away in the title. The biblical rapture occurs, and everyone who was left behind will now rot in the eternal hellfires of earth. However, God decides to give one person a ticket into heaven and escape their fate.

Last player standing gets the golden ticket.

I’ve Got a Golden Ticket

Online matches in Rapture Rejects take about five to seven minutes, especially in the latest game mode. This new game mode allows players to be respawned until the golden ticket is found.

Once a Reject discovers the one golden ticket hidden in an arbitrary loot box, their location is pointed out on the map for everyone else. The map starts to get smaller and close in on everyone as the other Rejects close in on the player holding the ticket.

Rejects will respawn before the ticket is found, but once the ticket make an appearance, it’s a free-for-all to the death.

It’s a formula known all too well these days, and what the devs use to keep players coming back is the character customization. Even if a player doesn’t win, they can accumulate silver tickets for a draw. A hundred silver tickets will buy one draw.

Buy the Game, then Spend Even More Money

This is precisely where the game falls apart. You see, players can slowly grind and try to get different outfits or accessories, or they can purchase them with accumulated golden tickets. Since the smaller tier unlockables cost 75 tickets and the higher tier upwards to 1000, that’s a lot of games a player needs to win.

What’s the quickest way to obtain all the accessories? Why, microtransactions of course!

This decision angered a lot of people. When Rapture Rejects was first in alpha and beta, it saw significantly more players than it’s seeing now.

Recently, the game has been peaking at under 50 players per day. The game is around $20 to begin with, and now they hit the players with microtransactions?

Needless to say, there was a mass exodus of players who simply refused to support the most common and unpopular pay structure modern gaming is plagued with.

The game isn’t even all that fun.

I have much higher hopes for the Cyanide and Happiness adventure game currently being backed on Kickstarter. It looks like it may be more of the Cyanide and Happiness brand that people want. It’s an extremely offensive comic, and that’s what fans like myself were hoping for in Rapture Rejects.

Instead we were treated to what I feel is quite frankly an insult. Less CD or pencil launchers. More Purple-Shirted Eye Stabber.

Rapture Rejects is available via Steam.

[xrr rating=”2.5/5″]

Watch the official trailer for Rapture Rejects below: