Knockout City is what happens when the community center’s weekly adult dodgeball session takes over an entire metropolitan distribution. It’s an online fast-paced fire-fighting game built around the mechanics of throwing and catching balls, drawing inspiration from online shooters, fighting games and fighters. It comes from EA and Velan Studios, the developer behind Mario Kart Live: Home.
Knockout City is on its way to PC, Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PS5 and Xbox Series X / S on May 21, complete with cross-play, shared progression and integrated voice chat between all platforms. It is online only, competitive and supports clan style staff up to 32 players. The launch day will be the start of season one, and each season lasts nine weeks. The game costs $ 20 in advance, and players only have to buy it once to gain access to new seasons. There will also be a free trial for the full game during launch.
There are three levels: Street Play (casual), League Play (competitive) and Private matches. On day one, Knockout City will feature five locations for dodgeball fighting, plus the Hideout, which serves as a foyer. It has six ball types, five game modes and a Street Rank progression system that unlocks hundreds of cosmetic options.
Yes, hundreds of accessories, hairstyles, vehicles and clothing options. The Crew system emphasizes team building with matching logos and accessories, which means members have to coordinate their appearance item by item. There is of course a digital store in Knockout City, the Brawl Shop, where players can buy items with the game money, HoloBucks. Or, of course, they can just throw in real money.
EA
“Any items in the Brawl Shop can be purchased at HoloBucks,” said Velth Studios CEO Karthik Bala. ‘HoloBucks can be deserve it by playing – or bought with real money if players prefer. Although his voice became noticeably quieter in the second half of the sentence, Bala made it clear that the Brawl Shop contained only cosmetic items, and no accessories that enhanced the skill.
‘Knockout City ‘it is designed to ensure that everyone is on an equal footing, where there is no advantage to take advantage and only your skills can be practiced individually and as a team, you can give an advantage over your opponents,’ he said. .
EA
There are no shootings in the game, and no guns at all. It is based entirely on the ball, and like a solid fighting game, players must rely on timing and positioning to take out opponents. There is no target mechanic; balls are automatically locked on enemies as long as you shoot your shot at the right time. Players can catch an incoming ball and fire again as quickly as possible, or hold it and strategize for a deadly throw.
It requires a solid amount of physics processing, especially with dozens of players on the map and numerous balls flying through the air. Velan developers have built a unique game engine, Viper, and programming language, V-script, to handle the load.
“It all starts with a V here,” Bala said. Speaking specifically about V-script, he went on to say: ‘Every line of code can run backwards as well as forwards, so our whole simulation is managed in a way that handles the delay on the internet. It’s quite unique. ”
Latency across networks and platforms was one of Velan’s biggest concerns. For example, one mechanic in the game allows opponents to “pull together”, or repeatedly throw a ball back and forth, with each pass faster until someone is startled and takes it to the face. Variation differences can completely break this mechanic, and Bala said he is happy with the way Viper and V-script handle the problem.