A game of SOS typically ends with a violent showdown between improv groups armed with guns and skulls, like a prop comedy workshop gone terribly wrong. It's framed as a reality survival show in which 16 players have to avoid monsters, find 'relics,' and escape on a helicopter—but there are only a few seats on the chopper, so conflict is inevitable. The real goal, though, is to be more entertaining than everyone else, to attract stream viewers and get emoji reactions. Mics are always on.

It can be an absolute disaster, but probably fun with the right people—if you can find them when SOS releases in Early Access tomorrow. In the meantime, James and Tyler got to play a few early rounds today and last week. Here's how they felt about being on the big stage.

Coming up with a character

Tyler: I sure love coming up with an improv character on the spot!

James: It’s a nightmare, Tyler. During that pre-match sequence where everyone gets a few seconds to say something and wiggle their digital avatar around, I clam up. I’m worried about what the hell I’m going to say, but my bigger problem is watching everyone else fumble to come up with something.

Tyler: It can be awkward. You have to have a desire to perform and be liked, or at least be notorious in some way. You have to want attention. I can be that person—not to the degree a popular streamer is, but to some degree. It's exhausting to be a part of at times, though. You can tell who's thinking, 'Oh God, what did I do? Why am I here?' and sometimes that's you, too. 

James: Yeah, I don’t want to write it off as bad just because I’m uncomfortable with it, but it’s tiring as hell. The cartoonish reality show island motif might be too wide of a starting point for me. Maybe some prompts for characters to play as or secret goals to set for yourself would be helpful. 

Tyler: Yeah, a more specific motive than 'escape' could help. I mostly went with 'friendly Canadian man who wants some Timmies,' but I had a harder time trying to be cruel or flippant, or really pursuing the goal I was supposed to. I didn't want to kill anyone. Even though I'm acting, it feels more like it's 'me' in the game than it does with PUBG. And the prompt is basically: 'Be funny. Now.' That's probably the hardest task a game has ever given me.

James: Yeah, it’s like a hardcore flight simulator, but for comedy. 

Meeting other players

Tyler: One guy noticed I was infected, said, "You have AIDS," gave me a syringe and then shot me in the face. That wasn't a great experience. How'd it go for you?

James: I didn’t meet anyone quite as rude, but my time with SOS hasn’t been too surprising. Most of the people I meet are either as naturally quiet as I am or they’re just doing an impression, mostly bad Russian and Italian caricatures. No grand betrayals or tense standoffs so far. Some YouTube-sounding guy pulled me aside and told me I was beautiful, after which we starting making kissing noises for a minute. 

Tyler: That last thing actually sounds pretty great.

James: It was funny! But it was also totally random. I had fun playing along, I just think everyone is trying to find their improv legs, even people who would otherwise never dabble. For every bizarre and cool interaction I have, I experience a dozen more awkward misfires. That’s to be expected—not everyone is natural comedian, including myself. It’s just painful to be a part of.

Tyler: I like the challenge of making our own fun, the game acting as a framework for social comedy—but that framework is going to determine a lot about the comedy. It's not just the players. I loved Friday the 13th for a while because I was playing with funny, giddy people, but I think the violent, predatory structure invited a lot of assholeish behavior as it grew, and it became less fun. SOS could be a real shitshow depending on who it attracts, and the behavior it encourages. For now, I wish it were a bit sillier.

James: Yeah, I mean the only expressive tools are your mic, a few emotes, and the objects you can carry. And the majority of those objects are weapons and healing items, which communicate cooperation or death. I want more pointless props, but pointless in that their only purpose is to be played with.  

Tyler: I'd love that too. I threw a piece of fruit, and then a knife at my partner while pretending they were just slipping out of my hands. But I couldn't think of many other jokes to make with what's provided. We're not professional comics. We need prompts, scenarios and objects that naturally create opportunities for comedy.

James: Skulls are one exception, I suppose. You bet I roleplayed Hamlet for a bit, pausing over the corpses of dead players to consider whether I knew them once or not, Horatio.

Tyler: I wish I'd been there for it. My best moment was throwing skulls and papaya at some unsuspecting targets. I died pretty quickly in most of our matches, but I followed you for a bit. Looked like you were in a squad of dancing streamers. I watched you guys declare my former teammate the most beautiful man in the world before slaughtering him. That was kinda funny. Again the props and premise didn't really lend themselves to anything but violence. When it gets to the end of a match, you've got to start killing if you want to 'win.' You got pretty close, actually.

James: Yeah, it was pretty startling. We had two relics and the chopper was just about to come down, so we started dancing. Well, I didn't have the dance emote equipped so I just held down the OK emote. Then, right before we’re about to dip out, gunfire rains in from all directions. I died right away, too surprised to react properly. Most matches climax like that, but I wish they were less inclined to. With only three seats on the plane, bashing someone over the head is a quicker route to victory than bartering. Then again, the audience can ‘react’ to your performance, which has the potential to propel you into first place, even if you die. I got second after that match. That time I said hello to my teammates must’ve put me over the top. 

Tyler: Dang, was I trying too hard? I goofed off for a bit with a guy because we couldn't figure out how to get into a base, and we were punching locks, trying to climb over each other, and all that. But eventually you have to go, 'OK, for real, we're not getting anywhere. We need to progress here.' The urgency can undercut the comedy.

James: The urgency is always there too. It makes pulling a trigger a much easier choice than spending anymore time than you have to with some guy doing a bad Rocky Balboa impression.

Being streamed to the world

Tyler: In a bad round of PUBG, you land, find nothing good, get sniped after wandering alone for 10 minutes doing nothing. But having a bad round of SOS is worse. It means not clicking with whoever you run into, not enjoying their sense of humor or finding any rapport, or being uncomfortable around them—like a guy who made a homophobic joke when I ran into him. We just disconnected right there. We couldn't be friends. A bad round can be humiliating, because you know nearly every player is streaming and you become complicit in their jokes, a prop for their audience to laugh at. Even if you try to outshine them, you're just helping them and their stream. So I just retreated. The highs of SOS are probably real high—a perfect comedy rapport—but the lows are disappointing as hell.

James: The first moments in a match remind me of those awkward workplace icebreakers, where you need to wander the room in search of a partner for some goofy game. Who you end up with likely determines how much fun you’ll have. Except there’s no immediate penalty for being an asshole, and the viewers at home might actually reward those assholes for toxic behavior. How the ‘humor’ is moderated will be a big task for Outpost Games, and the team will need to set a strong precedent early on. 

Tyler: There is a well-written set of rules that appears when you first launch the game, so hopefully those are enforced. For now, I'm still looking for that brilliant moment when I get someone and they get me, and we make it amazing. I think it can happen in SOS, but I expect it to be a pretty wild scene which it launches wide tomorrow—you know every streamer is going to be picking it up. It's perfect stream material.

James: And therein lies the hope. With enough of the better Twitch performers showing their audiences how much fun simple roleplaying can be, I would like to think that SOS can find an audience that wants to play along rather than throw cold joke spaghetti at the wall. It’s on Outpost Games to enable and encourage more ways to roleplay than loud ethnic impressions through garbage mics—not everyone should feel like they have to be funny—and our time with the Early Access build feels like a promising dress rehearsal.

Tyler: At least anyone who isn't sure about it—and I'm not sold—should have plenty of streams to watch. If it can be anything like Steven's experiences roleplaying in ARK, then it'll be a delight. That's my benchmark.

What sets SOS apart from other multiplayer survival games is its built-in social element: Players can talk to one another freely through a proximity-based chat (a microphone is required to play) and spectators can listen in on those conversations and throw out emotes in response. It's not the last player standing that counts, then, but the most entertaining—although as we learned in our December preview, a creative killer instinct is obviously a plus. It's been in closed testing for awhile now, but Outpost Games announced today that it will go into Early Access release on Steam on January 23.   

It's not just the ability to communicate that makes SOS different from games like PUBG or Fortnite. As we noted in our preview, it's purposely designed to put less pressure on players to kill everything they see. Guns and ammunition are relatively rare, there's a 30-minute match timer but no ring of death forcing players into contact,  and kills aren't tracked.

"There's a streamer who tends to win more than the average, and almost purely through social engineering. She just sort of makes friends, turns people against one another," creative director Ian Milham said. "She had two people who were both infected and needed the antidote that she had. She made them have a rap battle to decide who was going to get the antidote."   

The Early Access release of SOS will sell for $30. Further launch details will be revealed over the coming week.

Update: The post originally indicated that the Early Access release was set for January 29. It is in fact January 23.

Update: All 10,000 keys have been distributed! Enjoy the beta, gang.

SOS is pretty and promising, and I've got a few thousand beta keys to give away today. The first project of Outpost Games, SOS is an interesting take on the battle royale genre. 16 players compete not just to stay alive, but for fame and the adoration of real viewers watching via livestream. Here's an official description:

Players are tasked with retrieving a valuable relic in order to claim one of three seats on an escape helicopter. Survival is key, but winning isn’t as simple as outlasting the competition. In order to escape the island, players will need to use the power of both voice and personality to build bonds with other contestants and navigate the dangerous terrain. Scheming, strategizing and even backstabbing are commonplace and the contestants who do them most skillfully often have the best chance to escape.

It's like a mock reality TV show mixed with PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. From my article last week: "You've probably seen clips of clever roleplaying and acts of social engineering in sandbox games like DayZ, or GTA 5 roleplaying, or our very own Steven Messner being drugged and forced to sing karaoke in ARK. SOS' pitch is that it explicitly encourages and designs for the sort of pretending that players are already getting up to in these games."

Get a key

Keys are available through the widget above—simply use the enter your email and look for an email shortly thereafter. We won't distribute this information elsewhere, it's purely for this giveaway.

Here's instructions on how to redeem the key on Steam, if you need help.

For more info on SOS, visit the game's website at www.sosgame.com.

SOS is a survival game where surviving isn't the only way to win. You're on a dangerous tropical island with 15 other players, and three of you—at most—will escape. But you're also on a fictional reality TV show called SOS. If you're more entertaining than your competitors, the real-life audience watching you on Twitch can help you win. Even if you die.

It's a clever crack at the booming battle royale genre—what if social skills and showmanship mattered as much as fragging ability? A microphone is required to play SOS, and all players can talk freely through proximity-based voice chat. A counter at the bottom of your screen continually tracks how many people are spectating you, and another panel surfaces which emote viewers are sending you. When you die, you become one of these spectators. 

In other words, this SOS isn't interested in being the next PUBG. It wants to be something closer to PlayerUnknown's Gilligan's Island. 

The studio making it, Outpost Games, is led by industry veterans who have worked on stuff like Dead Space, Battlefield Hardline, and EA's 007 series. Outpost's vision is to "imagine what a game might look like if it was built from the beginning to be as fun to watch as it is to play," according to studio CEO and co-founder Wright Bagwell. "We formed Outpost Games with the mission to turn every player into a performer, and every game into a stage."

You've probably seen clips of clever roleplaying and acts of social engineering in sandbox games like DayZ, or GTA 5 roleplaying, or our very own Steven Messner being drugged and forced to sing karaoke in ARK. SOS' pitch is that it explicitly encourages and designs for the sort of pretending that players are already getting up to in these games.

"We've seen online a lot of games where people are sort of trying to create something, maybe they're roleplaying in GTA, or doing things in other games that are not exactly what the original game intended," creative director and SOS 'showrunner' Ian Milham tells me. "And the game, it kind of allows for it, but not really. And players are like 'We want to do this,' And the game's going, 'No, you should go capture the flag right now, or you should go get inside this circle for two minutes.' We believe that we can make a game that is not only cool with [what those players want] but is adding to it, and suggests things."

Milham gives an example of the type of behavior SOS has inspired in its alpha. "There's a streamer who tends to win more than the average, and almost purely through social engineering. She just sort of makes friends, turns people against one another. She had two people who were both infected and needed the antidote that she had. She made them have a rap battle to decide who was going to get the antidote."

Lord of the Televised 

The $19 million question—the level of funding Outpost has raised so far—is how well goofy, extroverted roleplaying can coexist with cutthroat tactics. SOS steps into the genre with original ideas, but it also inherits battle royale's kill-on-sight mindset. Will an average match of SOS fall apart if most of the competitors aren't willing roleplayers?

I'm the furthest thing from an entertaining streamer, and I greatly enjoyed the matches of SOS that I played. I think SOS has the potential to be an excellent story generator. It doesn't hurt that it's also a comfortable, aesthetically clean first-person game with expressive animations and character models. It's pleasant just extending a held item in your hand to another player (the T key) and seeing them take it. Movement, too, is smooth and forgiving, making SOS' Hollywoodized, lush island fun to traverse.

Propelling the fun I had, though, were several of those aforementioned charismatic roleplayers. The matches I played were populated by a handful of experienced alpha testers picked by Outpost to play alongside members of the press. I had a great time running with Classypax, who roleplayed as a supportive Christopher Walken in the video embedded at the top of this page. Going relic hunting with him, evading and fighting the deadly ape-like monsters that populate the island, and then being escorted to helicopter freedom by a convincing, quirky Walken is one of my gaming highlights of the year. 

One more standout moment from that session: in an abandoned temple, Mr. Walken suggested that we play dodgeball with the skulls we'd collected on our journey so far. Later, when we encountered a major enemy that held a relic, he simply yelled "Skull dodgeball!" to cue our ranged attacks, and we both knew what to do. 

One thing that could insulate SOS from 'kill-on-sight culture' is that it doesn't exude the macho, competitive intensity of games like PUBG or CS:GO. Matches have a 30-minute timer, but SOS otherwise doesn't exert much pressure. There's no ever-shrinking 'circle' to corral the action. Guns and bullets are pretty rare, and Outpost has deliberately omitted anything resembling a rifle for more intimate pistols and hatchets. Kills aren't tracked on any kind of mid-match scoreboard. 

There also isn't a wide spectrum of loot to lust after (backpacks aren't worn, and players don't carry body armor or other defensive items), so taking someone out doesn't really leapfrog you up the food chain. One exception is the infection, a mechanic that stimulates betrayal and bargaining. If you absorb a hit from one of the AI monsters on the island, there's a chance you'll become infected. An infected character will exhibit visible signs on their skin before eventually turning into an AI-controlled rage zombie. Eating the neon mushrooms that dot the island will keep the infection at bay, but what you're really looking for is a rare antidote to fully cure the disease. 

SOS is a bet on the idea that rap battling in front of a live internet audience is a lot more fun than just shooting someone to get that antidote. It'll be interesting to see how that idea holds up as players with a variety of preferences and personalities try SOS' beta next week (sign up here) ahead of a full release early next year.

SOS is a survival game with an unusual twist. 16 players head to an island on a mission to recover and escape with an ancient relic, but the helicopter sent to make the pickup only has three seats. Complicating things further, there are no teams; instead, players are free to talk to one another, as well as members of the audience watching online, to try to make deals and alliances on the fly. It sounds very Survivor-like, and the sosgame.com website plays on that show's slogan, saying that players must "out-think, out-run, and out-fight" their opponents. 

"In order to escape the island, players will need to use the power of both voice and personality to build bonds with other contestants and navigate the dangerous terrain," developer Outpost Games said. "Scheming, strategizing, and even backstabbing are commonplace and the contestants who do them most skillfully often have the best chance to escape." 

It's been in alpha testing for awhile, and the first round of closed beta testing is set to begin on December 11. To kick things off, the developers are holding a "Vets vs. Threats" event ahead of that, that will pit 100 "popular influencers"—the Vets—against 100 up-and-coming performers—the Threats. The Vets have already been selected, but the Threats have not. Unlike the closed beta, however, where you sign up and hope for the best, people who want to join the Threats team must get through a "competitive auditioning process," not to determine the best players (especially since you can't actually play it yet) but rather "the most entertaining personalities." 

"First and foremost—we’re looking for contestants with clear audio. The ability to coherently communicate with other players is essential in SOS, so make sure you have a quality mic," the developers said. "Aside from that, we’re just looking for people who want to put on a good show! This can be through role play, or simply by being your bubbly self." 

The SOS: Vets vs Threats event will run from 1-5 pm PT on December 9 and 10, and will be streamed on Hero.tv. Details on how to audition are up at sosgame.com/vetsvsthreats. The separate closed beta will follow on December 11 and go until December 17, with servers scheduled to be online 9 am PT to 9 pm PT—you can sign up for that (with just your email address) here.