Ring of Elysium

Ring of Elysium is a free-to-play 3D battle royale shooter that drops you onto a frozen mountain resort and asks you to loot fast, rotate smart, and survive a rapidly closing blizzard. Instead of fighting for a single winner, the endgame revolves around earning one of four extractions on a rescue aircraft, which creates tense, last-minute clashes as the storm forces everyone into the same shrinking space.

Publisher: Tencent Games
Playerbase: Medium
Type: 3D F2P Battle Royale
Release Date: September 19, 2018
Pros: +Impressive visual presentation for a F2P shooter. +Strong character customization options. +You begin with a pistol, reducing early RNG frustration. +No parachuting, you pick your initial spawn area. +Equipment kits and skills add variety to matches.
Cons: -Demanding performance requirements. -Stuttering, lag, and frame drops can occur. -Hair customization feels more limited than the rest of the creator.

Overview

Ring of Elysium Overview

Ring of Elysium takes the familiar battle royale loop and anchors it to a snowbound setting on Mt. Dione, a ski-resort map filled with lodges, open slopes, winding roads, and chokepoints that naturally produce firefights. Before the match begins you select a starting area on the map, which changes the early pacing compared to parachute-based BRs, since you can plan a route and anticipate where other squads may appear based on nearby spawns.

A defining twist is the equipment package system. Rather than landing empty-handed and hoping for the right mobility tools, you commit to one of three extreme-sports kits that shape how you traverse the mountain. The hang glider helps with long rotations and repositioning across elevation, the snowboard offers fast movement over snowfields and downhill routes, and the climbing kit (ice axe and pulley) opens up cliff paths and vertical shortcuts that can surprise teams who assume a ridge is safe.

Combat is grounded in modern, real-world firearms, and the loot game is familiar: search buildings and points of interest for weapons, ammo, armor, attachments, and consumables, then use the terrain and vehicles to stay ahead of the storm. The blizzard is not just a soft boundary, it is an ever-encroaching hazard that pushes engagements and punishes teams that loot too long. As the match closes, surviving players converge on the rescue extraction, where only four seats are available, turning the finale into a high-pressure scramble for positioning, denial, and last-second eliminations.

Ring of Elysium Key Features:

  • Fast-Starting Battle Royale – by choosing your starting location instead of parachuting, matches reach meaningful action sooner, and early routes can be planned with opponent spawns in mind.
  • Extraction-Based Win Condition – survival is not enough, you still need one of four seats on the rescue helicopter, which makes the endgame more like a contested objective.
  • Deadly Snowstorm Pressure – the freezing storm steadily overtakes the map, forcing rotations and punishing slow looting with hypothermia and death.
  • Equipment Packages – pick from three mountain-sport loadouts (hang gliding, snowboarding, and mountaineering) that change movement options and how you approach fights.
  • Authentic Weapon Variety – use pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, and explosives, then fine-tune performance with attachments found while scavenging.

Ring of Elysium Screenshots

Ring of Elysium Featured Video

Ring of Elysium - Official Gameplay Trailer | Free to Play Battle Royale

Full Review

Ring of Elysium Review

Ring of Elysium stands out in the crowded battle royale space by focusing on two things many competitors treat as secondary: deliberate map entry and mobility identity. Choosing a spawn point removes the roulette of parachuting and makes early decisions feel more strategic. If you want a quieter start, you can pick a less popular area and gear up, but you can also deliberately drop near likely hotspots to hunt quickly. This approach reduces dead time, but it also means strong players can predict traffic patterns and pressure spawns with confidence.

The equipment kits do more than add flavor, they change how fights unfold. A snowboard can turn downhill rotations into rapid flanks, while the climbing kit rewards players who treat vertical terrain as part of their toolkit rather than a boundary. The hang glider enables sweeping relocations and safer crossings, but it can also make you visible if you glide at the wrong time. In practice, these tools add readable playstyles without overwhelming the core gunplay, and they create memorable moments when a team uses terrain creatively to escape the storm or take a superior angle.

Gunplay and looting are familiar for genre fans. Weapons and attachments behave in the expected modern-shooter way, and the pacing generally moves from cautious early skirmishes to tighter midgame rotations as the blizzard compresses the playable area. The extraction finale is the real signature: knowing there are only four seats changes priorities. Sometimes the smartest play is to deny access and control the approach routes rather than chase every elimination, and the final minutes often feel like an objective-based shooter where positioning matters as much as aim.

On the technical side, the game can be demanding. Even though the presentation is strong for a free-to-play title, performance problems like lag, stutter, or sudden FPS drops can undermine otherwise solid engagements. When everything runs smoothly, the mix of mobility kits, vehicles, and storm pressure produces an excellent flow, but inconsistent performance can make the experience feel less reliable than top-tier competitors.

Overall, Ring of Elysium is best suited for players who enjoy battle royale fundamentals but want a less random opening, more intentional rotations, and an endgame built around extraction rather than a single last-man-standing circle. It is an interesting take on the genre with real personality, even if technical hurdles and hardware demands can get in the way.

System Requirements

Ring of Elysium System Requirements

Minimum Requirements:

Operating System: Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10
CPU: Intel i3 8130U(2Cores, 2.3GHz) or equivalent
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GT 730 or equivalent
RAM: 4 GB RAM
Hard Disk Space: 10 GB available space

Recommended Requirements:

Operating System: Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 (64-bit version)
CPU: Intel i5 2500(4 Core, 3.3HGz) or equivalent
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 or equivalent
RAM: 6 GB RAM
Hard Disk Space: 10 GB available space

Music

Ring of Elysium Music & Soundtrack

Coming soon!

Additional Info

Ring of Elysium Additional Information

Developer: Tencent Games
Publisher: Tencent Games

Platforms: PC

Engine: QuickSilverX

South East Asia Release: February 28, 2018
Steam Early Access Release: September 19, 2018

Development History / Background:

Ring of Elysium (previously known as “Europa”) is a free-to-play, 3D battle royale shooter developed and published by Tencent Games. Tencent Games is a minority stakeholder in Bluehole Studios, the developer associated with the popular battle royale title PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. The game is built on Tencent Games’ QuickSilverX engine. It first launched in South East Asia (notably Thailand and Indonesia) on February 28, 2018 through a partnership with Garena, then later released globally via Steam Early Access on September 19, 2018.