Fresh off an early access launch in October 2024 of its upcoming cyberpunk battle royale third-person shooter Off the Grid, Gunzilla Games is making huge moves in launching the genre-bending, blockchain-powered game Off The Grid (OTG), a third-person shooter layered in a story-driven battle royale. The game is in early access on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X & S, with a remixed free-to-play approach that also features digital in-game items secured with blockchain technology.

Gunzilla Games, the team behind OTG, is comprised of several gaming industry veterans, particularly the creators of CRYENGINE, a game engine powering the Far Cry game franchise, and Warface, an online shooter game that reached over 150 million players across its lifetime and at one point held the world record for most concurrent players on a single server for a shooter game. The founding team also includes Oscar-nominated film director Neill Blomkamp as chief creative officer, who is best known for directing the feature films District 9, Elysium, Gran Turismo, and CHAPPiE.

Utilizing this expertise in both building popular shooter games and scaling them up to hundreds of millions of players, Gunzilla is innovating on the standard battle royale shooter game with a fresh business model, compelling new features, a strong narrative component, and blockchain-based in-game items.

As Director of Web3 Theodore Agranat told OpenSea in a recent interview, “This team is stacked and ready to take on the biggest battle royales on the market.”

Off the Grid will drop an OpenSea skin with both a weapon and shirt. More details on the supply will be out in the coming weeks. To get a closer look at how Off The Grid is making its mark in a competitive landscape, we sat down with Theodore Agranat to gain insight on the project’s origins and future direction.

How ‘Off The Grid’ plans to differentiate itself 

The battle royale genre is dominated by several major titles, nearly every major entry in the battle royale genre leverages a free-to-play (F2P) approach, monetizing typically through selling limited-time in-game cosmetics and battle passes, which usually unlock game content via a progression system.

Given the market size for battle royale games, which is expected to reach $23.1 billion in 2031 in revenue and cover hundreds of millions of players, the OTG team sees room to carve a niche and bring new gamers into it with a unique approach. On the gameplay side, Agranat revealed that the game will feature among the largest maps of any battle royale, up to 150 concurrent players, and the ability to buy or sell any of your in-game items in a peer-to-peer marketplace.

Players will be dropped onto Teardrop Island, a square-mile-sized battlefield being warred over by three factions, with every player able to collect and equip cybernetic limbs that offer specific abilities and upgrades, such as legs that enhance speed or jumping or arms that fire grenades. These cybernetic limbs can be shot off opponents and stolen from defeated opponents, enabling players to change and mix up their play style in real-time. 

The team has given OTG’s storyline tremendous forethought, with the expectation of drawing players in through storytelling. The game promises to deliver over 60 hours of narrative on each side of a compelling central conflict at the heart of the game. A first in the Battle Royale genre. Further, Gunzilla is releasing short films from time to time, produced by Blomkamp, to advance the game narrative. 

The team hopes its special attention to OTG's storyline will entice players, who, Gunzilla’s research shows, invest more emotionally in games with strong central narratives and often reject battle royales.

Another departure from the norms of battle royales: OTG will only directly sell battle passes to players. Game items can only be acquired by collecting them in-game or buying them from the peer-to-peer marketplace operated by Gunzilla, which will integrate with OpenSea. The company will only monetize through fees on marketplaces and by directly selling battle passes, which will be required for players to list items for sale on the marketplace.

There is also a plan to run sponsored events through partnerships with major brands. As Agranat put it, “Brands always want to advertise to audiences they understand. With us, they’ll have plenty of information to come in and build relationships with our player base.”

Understanding how ‘Off The Grid’ is on-chain

OTG is developed to run on GUNZ, a blockchain built on a subnet of the Avalanche blockchain, which will be integrated with OpenSea. Its currency is the GUN token, utilized for buying and selling in-game items. Players will be able to buy and sell OTG items using GUN tokens on OpenSea in an upcoming launch.

In-game items tokenized as NFTs will include weapons, pieces of clothing, bionic body parts, and cosmetics for the player character. Players can add NFTs to their collection by buying them from a secondary marketplace or extracting them from within a gaming session.

“We’re expecting to drop a lot of in-game items per year in the game,” said Agranat. “Everything will be tokenized so you can own it and trade it with other players. There will be tens of millions of players in [the game], so we’re anticipating a lot of trading. Sometimes for really useful or rare items, other times for the basics when you’re running low.”

Players are initially dropped into the game with a basic pistol for a weapon, leading them to hunt for “Hex” items, which are boxes containing NFT-backed game items. For traditional gamers, this will feel like a seamless loot-and-shoot battle royale. For web3-friendly gamers, they’ll be building up a potentially valuable and rare collection that Agranat says they can show off in-game as well as sell if they choose.

“How many times are you playing a live service game and want to flex a particular skin in a tournament, but there’s nowhere to buy it?” asked Agranat. “There’s a viable market for selling in-game items and we’re incorporating that into Off The Grid.”

What’s coming next for OTG

With hundreds of thousands of players who joined the waiting list for the launch, OTG has entered early access. Players interested in the game can add it on both Xbox Series S & X, PC, and PlayStation 5.

The GUNZ chain will be integrated with OpenSea, opening up the availability of OTG items and exposing the game to a wide audience of NFT collectors.

‘Off the Grid’ goes live

On October 8, 2024, Off the Grid launched its early access phase on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and the Epic Games Store and made a splash with streaming partnerships with top creators Ninja, Scump, and TimTheTatMan, even giving Ninja his own cosmetic skin in the game. Off the Grid soon topped the most played and most downloaded charts for free-to-play games on the Epic Games Store. Since then support has been added for GeForce NOW bringing the game to mobile, tablets, MAC, older PCs, as well as TVs. 

According to a tweet from Delphi Ventures founding partner Piers Kicks, the game reached over 1 million hours viewed on Twitch in the first three days of early access.

As of today GUNZ is showing over 13 million wallets, over 370 million in total transactions, and averaging 2.5 million transactions per day. 

Announced on December 13, 2024, Gunzilla Games partnered with Delphi Ventures to launch the GUNZ Foundation in preparation for the forthcoming GUN token and mainnet launch for the GUNZ blockchain, with a stated target launch for Q1 2025.

“We’re ultimately aiming for 100 million players within 1 year of full game launch,” said Agranat. “We have a best-in-class team, a unique take on battle royales, and a seamless on-chain game economy. We’re really confident in Off The Grid’s future.”

‍Editor’s note: This article was written in partnership with Gunzilla Games. The mention of a token is for informational purposes only nor is it intended as financial or investment advice.