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Recently, I got my hands on Knockout City, a new EA title developed by Velan Studios. It’s a cartoony yet competitive multiplayer dodgeball game – kind of like Fortnite’s Tilted Towers has turned into a bustling metropolis and its legions of teenage flossers take to the streets to be a little mean before dinner time.
It’s pretty easy to figure out, as it’s a big inflated dodge ball game – but with a few twists and turns. And while I loved throwing and catching balls, there was one aspect of Knockout City that appealed to me more than any other: to become the ball.
Apparently, with nothing better to do, the youngsters roam Knockout City in dodgeball gangs of three or four, and throw balls at each other. It’s somewhat reminiscent of Rocket Arena, another EA team-based shooter, but it trades rocket-propelled grenades for rubber bullets. And that’s all you need to know, really. There isn’t a list of unique heroes with compelling stories here, however; it’s just a bright and colorful arena to jump into.
I asked Karthik Bala, founder and CEO of Valen Studios, why they went for the dodge ball in the first place. “Everyone knows the dodge ball, and it’s just something intuitive, that you just understand in terms of picking up a ball, throwing and catching,” he said. “And it was like, can we do something with that?”
I would say they did. In many ways, Knockout City don’t need a background storyline, as their main concern is whether they can deliver a good time. I think so.
“Velan worked a bit of magic here, translating the simple act of throwing and catching to a game and giving it weight and weight.”
On a handful of industrial maps, you and your teammates play against the enemy, in the hope that you score them and earn points for your team. There’s an expected assortment of modes: a classic team deathmatch, one where you collect diamonds after clearing nets, and another where you can only use your teammates as a ball (my favorite). Much like the founding movie Dodgeball and the actual game of dodgeball (which the movie clearly inspired), you dodge, dodge, dive, dive, and dodge your way to victory.
I’ve found that one of the most satisfying moves doesn’t start with a D, but with a C, because you can catch balls that are thrown at you. In real life this eliminates an opposing player and brings one of your own back to the game, but it’s well suited for a video game. With the right timing, you can return a caught bullet at your enemy with increased force. It’s less the feeling of passing your opponent that turns me on, and more the feeling of, uh, cushioning someone else’s ball. Velan worked a bit of magic here, translating the simple act of throwing and catching into a video game and making it feel real weight and weight.
I also have to yell at the wrong throw. It’s another super simple act, but I got flashes of devilish glee as I feigned an adventure and watched my opponent instinctively clap in the air in panic, trying to catch a ball that didn’t come. There are other tricks as well, such as the ability to bend bales like hay machines, or lob up and down to get around obstacles.
Knockout City differs from competitive shooters, where you point the crosshairs and click people to death. The accuracy and the use of blazingly fast reaction speeds can deter people from these games, but the emphasis is not on accuracy at all.
You automatically lock onto opponents as you gear up for an adventure, and I liked that matches weren’t determined by which players might click raster heads faster than everyone else. I had to think more about where I was positioned, where my teammates were, and How? ‘Or’ What I was going to throw the ball, above all.
The type of ball I picked up also mattered. One was a time bomb, which added an element of hot potato to games. You would see people toss it back and forth in a desperate attempt not to get toasted. I really liked the moon ball, which imbued me with a zero gravity effect every time I jumped in the air. This made it possible to hover over my enemies and spot all the juicy targets for my team.
But really, my favorite type of ball … was myself. In Knockout City, you can wrap yourself in a sphere and become a hand-propelled meatball. Hold the Alt key and you’ll roll around the map like a droideka chasing Obi-Wan or a Malteser who has escaped his packet. A teammate can then pick you up and launch you at unsuspecting enemies.
The real fun lies in the ability of your teammates to transform you from a bullet, into the equivalent of a mortar strike. They can charge you up until you glow, then throw you in the air – at which point control is given to you, as you guide your explosive self to poor, unsuspecting bastards below.
I think I found it so much fun because it felt sneaky every time, like I had scanned the fine print of the dodge ball rulebook before a gold medal game and discovered a loophole that change the game. “Ah, but there’s nothing here that says I can’t score a point by turning myself in a bullet is it there? I said to the referee, and started to jump into the arms of my closest ally during the tiebreaker, “Chuck me, Danny. DO IT!”.
There is also the detail that, if teammates pass you between them, you will reach this bomb state even faster. I asked Bala if anything surprised him during development, and he cited this strategy as something that no one on the team saw coming, even though they put it in the system.
“There was that developmental moment where we had three players on a team. The first player curled up in the second player’s arms, and the second player passed that teammate to the third player. And they were already in there. ultimate state of the bomb, at once“He said.” And we were like, what just happened, is that a bug ?! And in fact, it wasn’t a bug at all … we didn’t explicitly schedule that, it just happened, because that’s what it’s supposed to do as a system. “
Knockout City also took me by surprise, as I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I did. Conceptually, it sounds silly. But I think the fun I got mimics the dodge ball in real life, in a way. I can see myself enjoying it in little bursts, you know? The strange sitting here and there to relax in the evening. Perhaps as a brief cartoonish respite from my one true love, Call Of Duty: Warzone. That may ultimately be the problem: What makes Knockout City different is what can prevent it from finding an audience in a predominantly shooter market. Only time will tell if the armed warriors are ready to kiss the bullets.
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