Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, the ragdoll-physics, set-’em-up-and-watch-’em-fight game from Landfall, makes a full version 1.0 launch today. Despite the game’s jovial nature and ironic title, the studio says this is not an April Fools’ Day announcement.
TABS, which launched in Steam Early Access two years ago, will get multiplayer and two new factions with the 1.0 release. Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, broadly speaking, allows the player to set up two armies — pirates with cannons and cavemen with mastodons are among the factions — and let them duke it out to settle an eternal who-would-win question, for science. So far, it’s been a single-player-only game.
“The number one requested feature has been multiplayer, despite it never having been on the public roadmap,” Wilhelm Nylund, a designer at Landfall and the studio’s chief executive, told Polygon. “We have always wanted to add multiplayer to the game, so it’s great to be able to deliver that as a surprise for 1.0.”
Totally Accurate Battle Simulator’s 1.0 release is joined by three other launches — again, in the spirit of April Fools’ Day, but all three very much real products. Totally Accurate Battlegrounds, the 2018 April Fool’s satire of the battle royale genre, is still going strong and is now a free-to-play game.
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22413416/ss_86ded0b696212d241a9cc6a0577d94f954e030c1.jpg "Totally Accurate Battle Simulator hits 1.0 with multiplayer and new maps (1)")
The format change brings with it “a massive refresh” of content, as well as in the game’s networking and user interface. TABG free-to-play also adds “a completely new map filled with fresh weapons, attachments, and things that go boom,” Landfall said in a news release.
“The game has become a bit of a passion project for us,” Nylund said. “We initially didn’t mean to update the game, but when we released it for free in 2018, we got almost 3 million downloads in the first couple of days. We never expected that big of a response to the game, so we kept updating it.”
TABG is joined by Stick Fight: The Game’s launch on Nintendo Switch. The original Stick Fight has been available on PC since 2018. Stick Fight, somewhat like TABS, is a physics-based, platform/fighting game; this is its console debut. “Stick Fight is the ultimate party game, which works really well on the Switch,” Nylund said. “Each round is so short, and you can keep playing forever without stopping.”
And finally, an all-new game called Rounds launches on Steam. Nylund called Rounds a “1v1 roguelike deck-building shooter,” whose gameplay is partly inspired by Slay the Spire. In it, the loser of the previous round gets to pick a card to improve their build and counter their opponent. “Losing in 1v1 is usually pretty harsh, something we have addressed with the deck-building and rubber band mechanic, making it interesting to lose a round,” Nylund reasoned. “You can always turn a game if you are dealt the right card.”
TABS is still Landfall’s star product, and most of the studio’s live stream on Thursday afternoon was devoted to it. Totally Accurate Battle Simulator will get two new factions, each with a secret unit; two new maps and campaigns; online and local multiplayer, and Twitch integration.
“TABS is the perfect game for Twitch and YouTube, as it’s centered around the viewing experience of watching a battle take place,” Nyund said. “When we iterate on our games, we always try and make sure they’re just as entertaining to watch as they are to play.”
TABS has been available on PC (via Steam and the Epic Games Store) and Xbox One since 2019 (though the 1.0 release on Thursday applies only to the PC version). “We have a lot of fans of the game that have been following the game for years, but haven’t been able to play it themselves […] but they love watching others play on YouTube and Twitch,” Nylund said. “With the new Twitch integration, they can become part of the game themselves by having their name on a unit in their favorite streamer’s army.”
Also, the 1.0 release means TABS fans can finally discover what’s behind “the door.”
“On one of the early maps, our art director, Johan Lund, added a very mysterious closed door, and the community has always speculated about what’s behind it,” Nylund said. “It’s been in the game for a long time [...] so finally getting to open it is a lot of fun.”
Totally Accurate Battle Simulator 1.0 is $19.99 through Steam and the Epic Games Store. Stick Fight: The Game is $7.50 on the Nintendo eShop, and Rounds is $4.99 via Steam.
Correction: An earlier version of this story created the mistaken impression that Totally Accurate Battle Simulator had been an early access release, open to the public, for almost five years. It has been available in Steam Early Access since 2019, and was available through closed, pre-alpha sign-up trials before that.
