And having played a round or two at Gamescom this year, I can tell you it's actually pretty damn good. And while you might already be baulking at "yet another Battle Royale" game, Bad Blood is more of an exception because it truly shakes things up and goes about it in its own way.

And by that I mean this is just 12 people in an open map who need to "get to da choppa!". The only problem is there's just one spot on the chopper, and the only way you take that last seat is through collecting enough blood samples either extracted from infected piles of flesh protected by zombies, or by stealing other players' samples. It's not imperative you actually kill each other at all, but given the nature and make-up of the game, it's highly likely you'll kill each other.

Different tactics, however, present themselves through player distraction, hide and seek, follow the leader and more. For example, while one player is taking on, say, a Demolisher and his enclave of common infected, you can sneak into the sample area and extract the sample right out from under his or her distracted nose. And good players can also track the movements of players pro-actively seeking samples, to simply lay in wait for those distractions to manifest. Or, if one player has gained enough samples for a seat on the chopper, you can ignore scavenging for your own and simply hide somewhere in the LZ and attack them as soon as they come for that precious seat. Smart players will even spend their time building the best weapons they can (lifted from the original game) and ignore the samples in an effort to simply ambush the other busy-bee sample collectors.

The game is out in Early Access today via a "Founders Pack" which will set you back USD$19.99 (currently AUD$27.76), however, the full release of the game will actually be Free to Play. The Founders Pack does offer up exclusive items and once the game is released proper, those items will never be available again. They're also planning on a late 2018 - early 2019 release, so forking over cash now will give you more than a few months' worth of exposure to what I can tell you is a very exciting and fun spin on Battle Royale.

Grab it here through Steam Early Access and watch a new trailer for it embedded below.