Time to get salty about buying it while it was still in Early Access, even though it was explicitly stated that it would go free to play, because complaining is fun.
Anyway, Stunlock Studios’ Battlerite Royale is a battle royale MOBA fusion type of game. Think Fortnite, mashed into League of Legends, riding a tiger. You pick a champion with a unique set of skills and battle it out on a top-down map, until there’s only one of you left alive. You can even play it in duo mode if you have yet to alienate all your friends.
The game is a standalone offshoot of the Battlerite Arena MOBA. Initially, the developers thought it would just be a different mode for Battlerite, but the process of adjusting champions for battle royale play was too time-consuming. This led to the decision to make Battlerite Royale its own game, with a much bigger map, a day/night cycle, new art and music, new consumable items, new chests, new cosmetics, and all sorts of other royale-specific features. Johan Ilves, Marketing Director for Stunlock Studios, had this to say about it:
We want to give players the excitement of a Diablo-esque exploration experience combined with the character variation of a MOBA and the thrill of a survival game. That said, I think anyone who’s looking for a fresh and different take on the Battle Royale genre will have a blast.
If you were already playing Battlerite, you get to keep your username and any cosmetics and items you’ve managed to accumulate.
Battlerite Royale is currently available to play on PC. There were rumblings of an Xbox One release back in 2018, but this has yet to appear.