Some commercial failures in gaming become almost legendary. Take Concord — Sony’s multiplayer shooter that vanished weeks after release and gained a strange notoriety. Its collapse was so total that a group of developers later reverse-engineered the dead game and resurrected its servers, not because it was polished, but because the idea of bringing it back felt important.
Most failures, though, are far less glamorous. For every well-documented collapse there are dozens of multiplayer shooters that quietly faded away, their servers switched off with little fanfare and no retrospectives to memorialize them. They’re the anonymous disasters — games that scarcely left an imprint on players’ memories. Radical Heights belongs to that category.
In 2018 Boss Key Productions was desperate for a hit. The studio, founded by Gears of War designer Cliff Bleszinski and Guerilla Games co-founder Arjan Brussee, had already seen its previous attempt, LawBreakers, fail to capture an audience despite its pedigree. As LawBreakers struggled commercially, Boss Key hunted for another opportunity to regain traction.
Image: Boss Key ProductionsWith battle royale exploding thanks to PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, Boss Key sprinted back into the shooter arena. The team assembled a hastily built take on the format called Radical Heights and pushed it into what they branded “X-Treme Early Access” in 2018 — long before it felt finished. Mechanically it borrowed heavily from the emerging battle-royale template: players parachuted onto a grid-like map, scavenged equipment, and fought to be the last one alive. The difference was an overtly 1980s, game-show veneer that sprinkled the experience with quirky aesthetic choices.
At a glance it could look like a cynical cash-in. The rushed release exposed a product that resembled a pre-alpha build, with even basic features — like playable female characters — listed as “coming soon.” Still, beneath the rough edges there were flashes of originality.
I spent a lot of time playing Radical Heights in 2018 and, despite its roughness, I found it intoxicating. The battle-royale structure had an irresistible pull: matches created emergent stories and let players shrug off a bad round quickly rather than languish through a long, punishing match. On top of that, the shooter felt surprisingly crisp in combat for an early build.
But the game did more than mimic other titles — it introduced playful systems that made matches feel distinct. Sound design was a clever example: many battle-royale rounds are quiet affairs where firing a weapon is a risky announcement of your location. Radical Heights leaned into that tension. Some loot stashes were hidden behind “prize doors” that required standing on a pressure pad to open; doing so triggered a brash game-show jingle that broadcast your position and signaled high-value rewards. Those noisy temptations funneled players toward conflict instead of encouraging endless skulking.
Other touches added charm and strategy. In-round cash could be deposited in ATMs for later use, creating a meta layer that spanned matches. Inflatable decoys and BMX bikes introduced whimsical, tactical options that differentiated play from the more austere feel of titles like PUBG. And the neon-soaked 1980s styling gave the whole thing personality — messy and unpolished, but full of small, delightful ideas.
Happy Turkey Day
Explore our tribute to gloriously failed experiments, charming misfires, and the so-bad-they’re-beloved games we can’t help but celebrate.
None of that potential mattered in the end. The release felt rushed and desperate, and Boss Key shuttered its doors roughly one month after Radical Heights debuted. The game’s half-finished state — combined with the presence of microtransactions at launch — eroded goodwill at a moment when the studio could least afford it. Radical Heights disappeared almost as quickly as it arrived, and the space was soon dominated by the better-funded juggernauts.
I still miss it. Even accepting its rough edges, the title captured a creative energy from that period when developers were iterating wildly on the battle-royale formula. The big-budget successes eventually won the war, but there’s something bittersweet about the scrappier efforts. I often wonder how far Boss Key might have gone with more time and resources — every multiplayer collapse leaves behind a small, persistent question of what might have been.
Source: Polygon
