Pretty sure the giant, fire-spewing lizard is the fittest

Studio Wildcard has announced a new, free-to-play spinoff of its massively popular Ark: Survival Evolved.

Titled Ark: Survival of the Fittest, the new game is an eSports-focused ‘MOSA,’ or 'Massively Online Survival Arena,' that began life as a mod for Survival Evolved, before being spun-off into its own thing.

The idea’s pretty straightforward: take up to 72 people, throw them in a map with some environmental hazards and dragons, let them kill each other to death until only one remains alive, and declare that person the winner. It’s The Hunger Games, but with dragons and Survival Evolved’s popular features like player tribes and creature taming.

It’s interesting to see that Studio Wildcard is aiming this new game squarely at the eSports scene, where there isn’t really anything quite like this. Minecraft’s Hunger Games mode is hugely popular on YouTube and in-game, so seeing how a studio takes that idea and presents it alongside more traditional eSports will be pretty cool.

Survival of the Fittest is currently in Early Access, with development due to be completed by Q4 2017.