We’ve been hearing rumors about a pocket sized Overwatch for what feels like an eternity. Honestly, I thought it was just going to be vaporware. But they actually pulled the trigger. On August 31, Overwatch: Strike Rush officially hit digital storefronts for its initial soft launch.

If you were expecting a clunky, watered down port of the PC version that absolutely fries your phone battery and plays terribly, you’re in for a surprise. They built this thing entirely from the ground up.

A TOTALLY NEW WAY TO PLAY THE OBJECTIVE

Instead of forcing awkward first person shooter controls onto a touchscreen, Strike Rush shifts the camera completely. We are looking at a slick, top down tactical shooter designed strictly for mobile hardware. Matches are locked into a 4v4 format. It is fast, highly competitive, and perfectly bite sized for when you only have a quick ten minute break to kill.

You still get to lock in your favorite mains. Heavy hitters like Reinhardt, Reaper, and Tracer are already on the active roster, completely retaining their iconic kits and ultimate abilities. You just have to adapt those familiar playstyles to a brand new top down perspective. Right now, you can queue up solo and dominate online lobbies, but the devs are actively working on patching in a proper friend party system soon.

You have a little bit of time to practice your aim before you start trying to carry your squad.

WAITING FOR THE GLOBAL ROLLOUT

Here is the one catch. Right now, the servers are strictly locked to a Southeast Asian soft launch covering the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

For those of us sitting in North America, Europe, or down in Oceania, that basically leaves us with two options. You can either boot up a solid mobile VPN to bypass the region lock and get your hands on the game early, or you just have to patiently ride out the wait for the official global release.

The development team is actively using this soft launch window to iron out hero balance, fix server stability, and push new maps before opening the floodgates to the rest of the world. Keep your eyes peeled. The mobile shooter market desperately needs a fresh shakeup right now, and this might actually be exactly what we’ve been waiting for.