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Death Stranding Is Already Generating Hilarious Phone Game Rip-Offs
"You can finally try playing the great genius Kojumbo."
Details around Death Stranding, the upcoming game from Hideo Kojima's studio Kojima Productions, are sparse. We don't know much beyond the information we can gather from its handful of teasers and trailers, and a bit of what Kojima himself has offered up – a character name here, a hint of lore there.
Despite, or perhaps thanks to the mystery, Death Stranding is already inspiring some... interesting rip-offs for mobile.
Deadly Standing, officially billed as "A Survival Game" on its Google Play page, is the most unabashedly direct with its theft and the results are hilarious. Its artwork features shadowy, levitating beings in a rainy, gray landscape, which is similar to imagery we've seen in official Death Stranding trailers.
"Everyone knows Kojumbo genius," its official description boasts. "Therefore, the game is brilliant."
The description goes on to summarize Deadly Standing as follows: "There was a global catastrophe. The big explosion changed the familiar world and the water began to go away. All marine animals are stranded. Death spread all over the planet. There were strange dark creatures. The birth rate of children has stopped, but there is a small ray of hope in the form of a new child over the past many years."
In Deadly Standing, it's your job to "take over this baton" and "protect this child." For some reason, the child is in a "flask," hence the urgent call to action in its promotional screenshots: "SURVIVE AND PROTECT THE FLASK."
As you can see in the gameplay clip posted at the very top of this article, Deadly Standing mostly has you driving around a relatively empty landscape in a truck sniping creatures with overly sensitive touch controls. Truly the genius of Kojumbo.
The majority of reviews for Deadly Standing are jokingly positive, with a 3.5 out of 5 star average from 136 reviews.
Others were not so thrilled.
Clone games and rip-offs are nothing new or unusual for mobile app stores. This particular creator seems to have also generously borrowed from games like Sea of Thieves and Gang Beasts, and dipped into the battle royale market with titles like Last Grand Battle Royale Survivor Unknown and Last Survival Sniper Vs Zombie Dino on Island.
Earlier this year, PUBG developer PUBG Corp launched a lawsuit against a publisher for producing two games that were suspiciously similar to PUBG.
Chloi Rad is an Editor at IGN. Follow her on Twitter at @_chloi.