The Ark of Horizon was a Chinese Battle Royale game with one clear standout feature. It had superhero like Jetpacks, that allowed players to fly through the air like Iron Man.
This was honestly the coolest feature of the game and probably the reason why most players tried it out. The Jetpack didn't just temporarily boost the player up for a couple of seconds, like in a lot of other games, but it allowed quick traversing of large areas of the map, in a stylish fashion. The Iron Man comparison therefore seems pretty fitting. The Jetpack could however not be used indefinitely and required fuel. The fuel system in Ark of Horizon worked a lot like a stamina system for running in a couple of other games. After long periods of flying, the players will have to stop using the Jetpack to let it replenish itself.
Ark of Horizon praises itself for having combat on the ground, in the air and even below water. It is true, that the jetpacks enabled players to quickly reach another platform, but it didn't necessarily change the combat itself. The Jetpack could be used to quickly fly towards another player and start a surprise attack on him or to dodge incoming attacks. In air combat however was very rare and difficult to perform. The jetpacks were mostly used to get to another place quicker or to reach a platform in the air, on which combat than took place. The under water areas were actually even a bit disappointing since the water didn't seem to impact movement at all. Combat below water played the same way as on ground, just the environment looked a bit different.
The map in The Ark of Horizon consisted of a couple of islands, that were mostly filled with woods. The unique element were the flying ship-platforms in the air, which gave the game a bit of variety and something to differentiate it from the rest. The visuals overall were alright, but also not as good as the most polished games in the genre. The Ark of Horizon however definitely looked better than all of those mobile BR games, which usually have pretty hideous PC versions.
The soundeffects were also just okay, but often a bit too quiet and footsteps for example sounded pretty reverberating.
The weapon pool in the game is very comparable to most other BR-Games and consists of all classics like Shotguns, Assault Rifles, Snipers and Pistols.
Every player also got two abilities, that they could select before every match. One was a passive ability like to regenerate Health, Fuel or Armor and the other ability was an active one, like to create a dome shield or use invisibility for a short time.
Another nice feature of the game was the last stand mode. When players lost all their health, they would enter this mode, where they could only use melee weapons anymore. If they managed to quickly kill an opponent with the melee weapons, they would regain the active health status. During last stand, their new life bar would however constantly deplete. This prevented the last stand feature from being unbalanced and required players to really fight for their survival.
Same as some other BR games Ark of Horizon also used Bots to fill up lobbies. Some players recorded, that the Bots unfortunately took over a couple of months after release and they rarely encountered real opponents anymore. This was probably one of the main reasons for the game's downfall. The game had Solo and Duo modes, but no squad option. A nice feature was, that players could before the match test all weapons in the pregame lobby.
Ark of Horizon was at the end a very short lived game, which was probably due to its low player count (Peak player count never higher than around 250, which for a Battle Royale game is very low). The game was released in January 2019 and the permanent server shutdown followed in May of the same year. Supposedly the shutdown was due to technical issues, but I assume that is just a different way of saying the game didn't accumulate enough money with the lack of players.
The Ark of Horizon was a pretty unknown game within the BR genre and I believe that it would have deserved a bit more recognition, at least if you compare it to the armada of mobile games like Creative Destruction or Cyber Hunter, which had/have a much bigger population. The biggest problems of Ark of Horizon probably were, that apart from flying and the last stand mode, it didn't have any standout features or over-average gameplay elements. The lack of promotion and players outside of Asia was what finally determined the games fate. Despite this I would still like to see the implementation of the flying ability to some other game, because Ark of Horizon did this one well and for that alone the game was worth giving a try.
5.75/10
