Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Gaming
  3. News

Beat everyone at The Old Guard Netflix game and win a subscription for life

Jon Silman
By
The Old Guard | Official Trailer | Netflix

Netflix is giving away a lifetime subscription to its service for playing a video game, but there’s a catch: The winner has to beat everyone else in the world.

Recommended Videos

To promote its original movie The Old Guard, starring Charlize Theron as an immortal mercenary, Netflix created a video game and a tournament. The contest started Friday and will run through Sunday, July 19, at 11 a.m ET at oldguardgame.com.

Related

“It’s a browser-based, top-down, beat-em-up where you play as the lead character of the film, and fight off hordes of enemies using only the film’s iconic one-handed Labrys (aka a giant, double-bladed ax),” Netflix said.

The person with the top score in the world after the contest is over will win an “immortal” subscription.

“But how long is immortality, really? Netflix can’t promise a truly eternal subscription to its service, but it can offer the closest alternative: 1,000 months of service, which comes out to a bit over 83 years,” Netflix said.

Second place gets a subscription for a year and third gets a six-month one.

The game is a no-frills, fairly rudimentary affair, with one room and simple controls to move around. To use Andromache, players move using the arrow keys and attack using the spacebar. Andromache has a health bar and will revive if killed, but that will affect the score. Players can build up combos by getting chained kills as well.

There’s no purchase necessary to play the game, but registration is required, and it asks for a birth date and phone number. There’s no limit to how many times someone can play, and only their highest score will be recorded. Netflix is going to keep track of the scores with a top 10 leaderboard on the site, and a list of the winners will be posted on July 25.

Scoring works like this: Every killed enemy gives points, determined by a combo multiplier. Also, the faster a level is cleared, the higher a player’s score will be.

The Old Guard premiered on July 10 and is based on a graphic novel by Greg Rucka, a comic book writer who’s worked on Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman comics. It also stars KiKi Layne and Matthias Schoenaerts, and it’s directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Jon Silman
Jon Silman
With Valiant Hearts: Coming Home, Netflix finds its video game voice
The playable characters of Valiant Hearts: Coming Home all standing together.

As we are in the earliest stages of Netflix’s foray into the games, the company is still trying to discover what a “Netflix game” really feels like. We’ve seen ports of fun console beat ’em ups and enjoyable puzzle games, but I don't feel that those really define the platform’s emerging identity. Valiant Hearts: Coming Home, on the other hand, does. A sequel to a 2014 narrative adventure game set during World War I, it's a thoughtful and emotional journey that naturally reflects some of the film and TV content available on Netflix.
Valiant Hearts: Coming Home | Official Teaser Trailer | Netflix
It’s both highly educational and a solid sequel to one of Ubisoft’s most underrated games. Like Before Your Eyes, narrative is a clear priority, as is the distinct visual style that would work even if this was a traditional animated show. Netflix is known for evolving prestige TV and defining what storytelling in a streaming-focused series could be, so it would benefit from giving its exclusive games a similar focus. Valiant Hearts: Coming Home might not be a perfect game, but it’s a solid example of what a premier Netflix game could look like in the future.
War stories
Valiant Hearts: Coming Home, like its predecessor Valiant Hearts: The Great War, is a narrative-focused adventure game that hops between several stories from soldiers (and a medic) who served during World War I. Familiarity with the first game is helpful, as some characters reappear, but not necessary as the sequel tells a new story mainly focused on the Harlem Hellfighters, a group that fought with the French after the U.S. joined the conflict. It’s a story about the horrors of war and the family and friendships that wither through it all that focuses more on human stories rather than the bloody combat that games typically like to highlight. 
While its story doesn’t feel quite as intertwined as The Great War’s, Coming Home is still enlightening, shining light on parts of the war that aren’t typically covered in your standard history class. I’d even recommend it as a good entry point for kids learning about World War I, especially because the game features plenty of collectible objects and facts that allow players to learn more about the battle. Like the best content on Netflix, it’s a creatively rich and additive experience.
It does all that with a minimalist style, as its characters speak in pantomime, only saying a word or two as a narrator eventually cuts in to fill in narrative blanks or give context on the state of the war. While it might seem disrespectful to represent such a brutal war in a cartoonish manner, the horrific moments stand out all the more clearly as a result. One particularly memorable set piece doesn’t contain any dialogue. It has the player walking across the bottom of the sea as you see bodies and ships from the Battle of Jutland sink to the seafloor. It’s equally awe-inspiring and horrifying, bolstered by Coming Home’s distinct visual style.

The gorgeous 2D art is colorful, looks hand-drawn, and almost feels kid-friendly despite how grave the subject matter it’s portraying is. Netflix is home to some great animation, so it would also make sense for that artistry to apply to its games. On the gameplay front, Coming Home is comparatively simple. Players use touch controls to easily walk around, climb, and interact with objects throughout the game to solve simple puzzles. Occasionally, some minigames with unique mechanics, like treating and patching up soldiers’ wounds, spice up the game. It is approachable in design and never particularly complicated, but that also means the gameplay never gets in the way of its storytelling and art.
The biggest downside to is that it’s regularly interrupted by loading screens. Even though they were very brief on my Google Pixel 7XL, they dampened some scenes’ artistic and emotional flow.
What makes a Netflix game? 
Valiant Hearts: Coming Home is a beautiful narrative-focused game that feelsat home on Netflix. It demonstrates how titles with compelling stories can be just as engaging on a phone as they are on PC and consoles. That mentality is a perfect match for a platform that made a name for itself mostly through serialized, story-driven TV shows and movies, and now also offers games with strong stories like Desta: The Memories Between, Before Your Eyes, and Immortality. 

Read more
Netflix adds Kentucky Route Zero and Twelve Minutes to its game lineup
Kentucky Route Zero

Netflix's game library continues to expand with today's addition of two very notable narrative-driven games from Annapurna Interactive: Kentucky Route Zero and Twelve Minutes.
Kentucky Route Zero is an episodic-narrative adventure game that's centered around the titular, mysterious underground highway. It took seven years for all of the episodes to release, but it's all now available in one package. It's hard to go into too many details without revealing spoilers, so suffice it to say that it's a fantastic, critically acclaimed experience that anyone who likes games with interesting narratives with enjoy. 
Meanwhile, Twelve Minutes is a point-and-click adventure game starring Jame McAvoy, Daisy Ridley, and Willem Dafoe about a man stuck in a time loop where a man breaks into his house and kills both him and his wife. While its premise and presentation are certainly eye-catching, the game proved to be pretty divisive upon its release due to an unsettling revelation in its ending. Players can now see what the fuss is about with both these games on mobile if they already have a Netflix subscription. 
Netflix also announced that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge and Vikings: Valhalla will come to Netflix in the first quarter of 2023. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge is a fun retro-style beat 'em up featuring the iconic characters that garnered a five-star review from Digital Trends earlier this year. We called it a "must-play for both TMNT and beat-’em-up fans alike."
Meanwhile, Vikings: Valhalla is a Netflix-exclusive game based on the show of the same name. Developed by Emerald City games and published by Tilting Point, Vikings: Valhalla is a strategy game where players build settlements and battle other Viking clans.
Kentucky Route Zero and Twelve Minutes are available on the Netflix app via iOS and Android. To download them, go to the Games tab on the Netflix app and choose the game you'd like to play. This will then bring you to App Store or Google Play Store, where you can download Kentucky Route Zero or Twelve Minutes and then start playing on a mobile device. 

Read more
The Netflix app on your phone is hiding dozens of games, and they’re great
The Netflix Games logo on the Pixel 4a.

Hidden among Netflix’s endless main menu, where you usually scroll through its extensive list of shows — unable to decide what to watch — you may have stumbled across a section labeled "Mobile Games." Yes, a small library of games is also included with your Netflix subscription, and despite being around since the end of 2021, not everyone may have given them a go yet.

But are they streaming games, like the now-dead Google Stadia service? Or is this something different, and do you need one of the best smartphones to play them? We’ve investigated to find out.
How Netflix Games works

Read more