Deadlock The Game, my new obsession
MOBAs are so back
My first MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) experience came in 2014, with Blizzard’s Heroes of the Storm (HotS). It was unfortunate that my first was, by the time of its release, already considered late to the scene after Valve’s DOTA 2 and Riot’s League of Legends (LoL) had already established footholds and extremely dedicated fan bases.
That didn’t stop me falling head over heels for HotS though, with its colourful cast plucked straight from Blizzard’s impressive catalogue of games and worlds. One game I could be flinging arcane orbs as Li Ming, the wizard from Diablo 3. The next I could be the omnipresent Abathur from the futuristic Starcraft, living my best alien slug life. Or, I could be one half of the two-headed ogre Cho’gall, a brilliant co-op character from World of Warcraft.
I spent thousands of hours playing HotS, obsessively improving my skills (my highest rank achieved was Master, one short of the top rank, Grandmaster) and getting giddy each time a new hero was announced.
So it was a big blow when Blizzard announced that support for the game would all but stop in June 2022. Admittedly my playtime by then had slowed, but this was the final nail in the coffin for me. Yes, you can still play HotS and Blizzard does (very rarely) update the game with balance patches (tweaking and tuning heroes so they’re neither too weak nor too strong), but the excitement has gone.
Enter Deadlock The Game, a new entry in the MOBA genre from legendary developer Valve. In short, Deadlock is your classic MOBA — there are two teams trying to push into each other’s territory to eventually destroy each other’s base. This base goes by different names in different games — it’s called the Core in HotS and the Nexus in LoL, for example — but the goal is always to destroy it.
Deadlock is no different. Each team tries to destroy the other’s base (called a Patron), which they can eventually reach after pushing down lanes. There are a host of characters to play (more on them below) and each have hugely varied abilities to master. In classic MOBA fashion (HotS aside), there’s an item store where you can purchase upgrades for the character you’re playing throughout the game.
It’s not really that different to other MOBAs, but I’m still so excited about Deadlock. Which is exactly why I’ve written this article. It’s a chance for me to gush about why I’m falling head over heels for Deadlock, covering the things it does well. And not so well, for the sake of balance of course. Honestly though, the negatives are remarkably small for a game barely in its first early alpha stage.
Right then, let’s dive into why Deadlock is my new obsession!
The setting
I’ll preface this section by saying Deadlock is in early Alpha right now, and that means everything, including the setting and theme, is subject to change at a moment’s notice. In fact, Deadlock has already undergone a complete thematic change, shifting from a cyberpunk aesthetic when it was called Neon Prime, to what it is now — New York Noir.
Deadlock as it is in 2024, is based in an alternative vision of the world sometime in the early to mid 20th Century, where the paranormal is normal and spiritual entities can quite literally run for government. The map you’ll find yourself battling in is a version of New York featuring pentagrams, esoteric rituals, and Art Deco buildings.
The world Deadlock is set in learned of the existence of paranormal forces roughly fifty years ago, and has since tried to come to terms with creatures from different planes of existence.
Some are benign, some are malignant, and some just want to be left alone to live as normal a life as they can. All this background is told through emergent narrative, with the characters you play talking to one another, or heard as soundbites from radios scattered around the map.
I’m a big fan of occult vibes and Lovecraftian aesthetics — there’s just something about otherworldly forces and supernatural entities that draws me into a world. Deadlock is already a game tailor made for me it seems, and I’ve been doing deep dives into the limited lore currently available.
And limited though it is, Valve are doing an incredible job building up the Deadlock folklore. I’m honestly clamouring to find out more and am absorbing any tidbits of new information quicker than you’ll find me queuing for another game. Speaking of…
The gameplay
I’ll echo the sentiment expressed across the Deadlock subreddit and the Deadlock Discord — this game is very fun to play and it’s amazing how well it plays even in early alpha. If this is a taste of what’s to come, I believe Deadlock will become something quite special.
I’m firmly hooked on the gameplay loop and Deadlock scratches the itch for fast-paced combat à la Overwatch, and the tactical nous of MOBAs I’ve been searching for.
What’s interesting about this game’s early days are the contrasts between players of different gaming backgrounds. Overwatch players seem pretty set on aggressive team fights, often choosing to push deep into enemy territory to secure a kill on another player. Players with classical MOBA backgrounds appear to focus more on the objectives, pushing lanes and clearing enemy minions and camps.
This is just an early observation though, but it’s fun to see the two playstyles being experimented with in Deadlock’s early days. I believe as game knowledge improves and skill levels rise, those with MOBA backgrounds will have more success — after all, just trying to fight the other team all game like you’re playing Overwatch tends to result in dying more! And as a game progresses, the time it takes for your character to respawn after dying increases, sometimes giving the enemy team an insurmountable advantage.
The characters
Of the three characters I’ve played so far — Lady Geist, Dynamo, and Viscous — have all felt amazing to control. There’s room for polish, definitely, but as with the gameplay, if the characters play this well already, I can’t wait to see how much better it gets.
There are 21 characters available to play right now, but this’ll almost certainly be more when the game finally gets released officially (whenever that is). In my opinion, between 21 and 30 characters is pretty healthy roster to start with, as everyone is still learning the game. It’s tricky enough memorising and learning the abilities of the existing roster so you’re not caught out in a game!
A little tip: if you’re in the Sandbox mode trying out characters, you can also access some unreleased ones. In Steam, go to the Deadlock page, click the cog symbol to the right, select Properties, and in Launch Options, type this exactly:
-Console -Dev
This will give you the ability to enter console commands in the game! Once in the Sandbox mode, press F7 to bring up console commands, and enter some of the following to test unreleased characters:
selecthero hero_astro
selecthero hero_mirage
And the one I’m most excited for,
selecthero hero_nano
I cannot get over how much I love the aesthetic of this upcoming character, just look at how cool her and that cat are! I’ll stress again that these are unreleased characters and therefore, potentially very unfinished.
The existing characters all come with interesting background lore (bar one, which I’ll explain in a second), and Valve have done a brilliant job of getting you invested the minute you read their individual stories. You get a sense for their motivations, understanding why they’d fight to gain the favour of the supernatural Patron.
Dynamo, for example, had his body atomized and reduced to a tiny dying star. This has left him confined to a metal shell of a body, unable to feel the touch of his loving wife. Maybe, just maybe, completing a ritual for this Patron could help return his physical form, and he could once again embrace those close to him.
Pretty compelling right? He and others certainly feel more fleshed out than Jacob Lash, who on the other hand, comes with this hilariously brief background:
“Jacob Lash is an asshole.”
Based on the many times a player on Lash has picked me up and slammed me to the ground, I’ll agree with that sentiment.
The community
Games made by Valve tend to garner a dedicated following, and Deadlock is following suit. There’s the subreddit, which is growing exponentially, and the official and community discords, all of which see thousands of people excitedly talking about everything Deadlock (and a fair bit beyond that in the general chat channel).
There’s a shedload of memes too, such is the internet of course. My favourite are the memes made by the near-fanatical following of a character called Ivy, a gargoyle brough to life by supernatural means. Then there’s the fan art, which ranges from rough Microsoft Paint sketches, to watercolour masterpieces (seriously, how are people already this good at painting Deadlock characters).
One downside I’ve noticed, and something I hope doesn’t become a big problem, is the presence of toxicity in some games. I get it, it’s a MOBA and people getting frustrated with teammates is par the course. But it’s also a game in early development, meaning there’s loads of people just experimenting with different ways to build and play the characters.
This I’d say is a problem that has the potential to scare some new players away. I know it can be a bit irritating to have someone cluelessly wondering around the map with no idea how to play, but we all start there once. Plus, as a game in early development, there’s very little in the way of accurate matchmaking. You’re going to get wide disparities in skill levels for the time being.
So to any Deadlock players reading this, let’s do our best to welcome as many new players to this incredibly fun game and instead of getting angry when they make a mistake, offer encouragement for what they’ve done right. For example, I had a player contact me after a game in which I was clearly the bottom of the barrel in terms of skill. He helped guide me through some tips for the character I was playing, and told me where I’d played well and what I could implement into my game to improve. It felt genuinely helpful and I really appreciated the kind words, and essentially, I felt welcomed by the Deadlock community.
A tip: for if you really don’t want to deal with the text or voice chat in game, it’s simple enough to mute it. Just press the escape key, and on the right side is a dropdown menu beside your name, where you can disable any chat/microphones for individual players.
Buckle up, Deadlock is gonna be huge
Look, I know how common it can be for hype to balloon to comical proportions, but I firmly believe Deadlock is gonna be a huge hit. It’s quietly gathering a dedicated fanbase already, and for a game just running in early alpha, there’s a lot of players already.
At the time of writing this article (23.09.24), Deadlock had a peak daily player count of 151,680 (myself included).
Compare this with the stricken Concord, a big-budget hero shooter from Sony in the vein of Overwatch. Within barely two weeks of launching, the game’s unbelievably low sales and player count (it peaked at 697 players) caused developer Firewalk Studios to announce the shutdown of the game. It must sting somewhat to see Deadlock, a game not even close to coming out, doing so well already.
Just a quick note on Concord — I really feel for the team that must’ve spent years working on it, only to see it fail in the way that it did on launch. Gaming is a hard industry to crack and unfortunately for them, Concord simply didn’t work for a multitude of reasons. Push to Talk did a great piece recently on avoiding disastrous game launches that goes into more detail on why Concord failed, if you’re curious.
But yeah, the way Deadlock is progressing thus far says to me that when it does see the official light of day, it’s going to be massive. I struggle to imagine a future in which Deadlock doesn’t have millions of players, and, I assume, a flourishing esports scene.
It’s so damn exciting to be here at the start — it’s taking me back to when I first played the closed beta tests for Heroes of the Storm.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to fire up Deadlock for another game.