Grand Outlaws Launches a GTA-Like Mobile Crime Sandbox on Android and iOS

Grand Outlaws has arrived on Android and iOS with the sort of feature list that suggests somebody looked at mobile gaming and decided it needed considerably more criminal activity. The open-world action RPG spreads its sandbox across two large islands, Suburbia and City, and combines online role-playing with open-world PvP, racing, battle-royale arenas, vehicle customisation and alliance play.

Players build a reputation while interacting with other people in the shared world, purchase and customise vehicles and equip weapons ranging from pistols to sniper rifles. Comparisons with Grand Theft Auto are inevitable, but the more interesting question is how successfully the developers can compress a persistent multiplayer crime sandbox into the practical constraints of phones.

Mobile hardware is now powerful enough for surprisingly ambitious open worlds; network stability, interface design and long-term content tend to be the harder problems. Grand Outlaws is therefore another example of the narrowing gap between what developers consider a 'mobile game' and a conventional online game that simply happens to run on a telephone. Somewhere, the humble three-minute bus-stop puzzle game is looking increasingly nervous.