Knockout City is a lot to deal with. In the playlists of the funky, futuristic and extremely dead ball game, few things are as simple as it sounds. In a preview staged by producer Velan Studios and Electronic Arts on Tuesday, I regularly stood back and watched the action and tried to develop a sense of fundamental game.
Teamwork is just as important for the winning (and fun) game as an understanding of Knockout City‘s many unique rules and techniques. Good news for that: the first closed beta for the game launches on February 20 on a PC.
“Because dodgeball is the inspiration, we can play with multiple balls in the scene,” said Guha Bala, co-founder and president of Velan. Velan recently developed the October game-to-life / mixed reality game Mario Kart Live: Home
“There are very few movements, but it is very complex in terms of layers, which allows you to really go through the kind of cycle of introduction, practice and mastery,” Bala said. I would not agree that there are few movements here, but I see his point is easy to learn and then difficult to master.
In one straight before-all match, I see beginners (like me) run at top speed as soon as they see a ball batting point, which turns to fire away, only to take away their surprise by someone. who paid better attention when the tutorial showed how to intercept a ball. There is a melee attack that is also a good counter to separate an enemy from their ball.
Rolling up a ball (one of the more wild card aspects of Knockout City) means a teammate can choose they up and throw them. Just to run into a rolled-up teammate, they pick up; it was a bit confusing the first few times it happened, but of course it means it Knockout City can serve team-based, knockout game variants where there are no balls.
As for the balls themselves, you probably guessed that there is more than just your standard, red kicking ball (which makes a satisfying “PROONT” sound when it hits someone in the face.) If you throw it, you should be quick with the right trigger (a faster) but less effective attack) or to load it with an automatic lock to the nearest opponent.
An explosive Bomb Ball’s large explosion area makes it something players want to quickly find and get rid of; but it also means that intercepting a ping-pong Bomb Ball is no longer a way to turn the tables of an enemy. (And a generous timing for catching an incoming ball means I’m on the left trigger command for this, somewhat reflexively, but the game has found a way to force me out of crutch movements and keep me on my toes .)
Because Knockout City based on rounds, teams can kill pretty badly (and lose a tennis player in an early series) after a very dominant second or third round and a comeback victory. As Bala puts it: “I was dying in Diamond Dash [a team-based game where KO’d players drop a litter of diamonds, meaning sharp teammates can be there to make the save.] But I came out with the last deciding point and got the last diamond for our team that won the game. You had a surprising number of linking moments in the game. ‘
The one I was worried about is what delay can do in a fast paced game. Bala boasts the engine for which Velan developed specifically Knockout City, which the studio calls, Viper. It’s very technical, of course, but ‘we added another super performance engine with a new calculation method to keep a physics simulation synchronized,’ Bala said.
The aesthetics of Knockout City is very important for the game, not only because roof cards mean potholes (in one case a big swinging wreck ball), but also pillows and seats that you can reach. In other words, it is not a court sport. It also means endless, flashy customizable items (there are 17 cosmetic slots and three characters to build and swap), which means Velan plans seasonal content and the like, once the game launches on May 21, 2021.
And with cross play and cross progress between all platforms, it means Knockout City should have a large user base during the launch so that people can get into action quickly. Knockout City will be available on everything: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and PS5, Windows PC (via Steam and Origin) and Xbox One and Xbox Series X.
About whether I will get well Knockout City, Bala handed out some protips, but mostly said: Yes, watch a few rounds and I’ll get the knee – and if not, I’ll at least watch a very entertaining game. “Just spend some time after that,” he said. “I think it’s a pretty watchable game, too.”