Velan Studios’ Knockout City is a fun game that anyone can pick up and play. It has everything it needs to be a go-to competitive game that is destined to find its way regularly on an Esports schedule. If the promised content is consistently delivered, then it will certainly stick around for years to come.
One of the biggest issues I have with competitive gaming is the lack of even ground. Typically, you have characters that are overpowered or underpowered. You have equipment that gives one player an advantage over another. You have a different combination of attributes that tip the balance of fair gameplay. Some, if not all of the above are reasons I avoid Esports gaming. It’s difficult to find a game with an ‘even ground’ starting point. Gamers who have enough time on their hand can exploit these things above and just make the entire experience unexciting and un-fun for the rest of us. Finding the right amount of balance and creating a game that puts everyone on even ground during competition is a rare thing these days, especially when gamers must rely on skill and strategy to overcome adversity.
Knockout City is right there, right now.
Velan Studios has created a dodgeball game that relies more on your skills to strategize, rather than power-ups and gimmicks to make the gameplay feel cheap. At its core, Knockout City does its best to make sure that you can take down anyone at any time, regardless of leveling and items. It has wonderful intentions of becoming a fun game for everyone right now. Is it perfect? Not at all, but it is a pick-up-and-go gameplay structure that works for all types of gamers.
Let’s get it on!
Dodge, Dip, Dive and…Glide?
Knockout City’s gameplay mechanics are easy-peasy. They require the player to jump, dash, shoulder charge, throw the ball, catch the ball, and glide when necessary. All of these mechanics are pedestrian at best, which isn’t an insult as you might read it as such, rather it’s praise because it’s all easy to learn and use. You don’t have to be a 24/7 competitive gamer to get into this game quickly. The biggest worry in the game is throwing the ball and catching it, everything else is a tool for strategizing your way through a match.
To throw the ball, you just hit R2 on the controller, which locks onto the target you have chosen, and tosses the ball in that general direction. If you hold R2 down a bit longer before throwing, you can actually charge the ball, which makes for a deadlier hit, should it land. A regular hit takes two shots to take an opponent down, which means there will be a scramble for a ball once it makes contact. Should you charge it up, which takes a bit longer and keeps you exposed to getting hit, then it’s a quicker take-down. You will have moments in the game where you need to survey the environment and your enemies before making that quick decision to hit twice or charge up.
To make the choice easier, there are different types of balls in the game, yes, snicker it out, which have specialties attached to them that make them powerful. You can find these everywhere on a map. For example, there are steel balls that come in three, which can be picked up and thrown back-to-back-to-back, but also have a chance to be thrown back-to-back-to-back at you. There is also a moon ball (which you can find out on your own) and other goodies that, while cool and special, still don’t give particular advantages for one player over another, rather they just react differently when executed properly. All of them can be caught, all of them can be thrown back.
And then there is a ball where YOU become the ball and have a teammate throw you. That’s fun.
Equally as important as ball choice, is the game’s throwing mechanics, which are built for teammates to help each other out, especially in the passing category. If you pass a ball back and forth, you can charge it up. The better the charge, the more powerful it becomes when/if it hits the target. Passing is heavily encouraged in the game, though you don’t have to do it, by doing passing it you become a better player and a better teammate. The only way to survive a competitive game is to be a better teammate. Shake and bake, right? Not only do you become a better teammate by passing, but the game also opens up with more strategy. For example, faking someone out who is ready to catch the ball might cause them to react prematurely, which means you can more than likely strike them hard. It’s a simple concept that equals out to a potentially brutal strategic move. Being strategic as hell is the name of this simple game.
On the catching side of the game, it’s all about timing and quick reflexes, which will more than likely be the element that attracts competitive gamers. Knowing when to react, when to catch, then to immediately throw it back in a competitor’s face is how the game functions at its highest competitive level. As the old saying goes, a good defense creates a good offense, and it has never been truer than with this game. The L2 button will catch and hold an incoming ball, regardless of the ball. How well you do that depends on your timing and understanding of what is being thrown at you and how powerful it is. If it’s a regular ball, then it’s easy to get the timing down. If it’s a charged ball, then it’s quicker and trickier. The more you catch, the quicker the exchange between opponents until some messes up the timing. If it’s a human being rolled up that is being thrown? Good luck. Timing is everything and perfecting catching in the practice mode of this game is vital. As is the case in real dodgeball, you have to understand speed and when to react at the right time, otherwise you’re going to hear the fateful bounce of oddly placed rubber off your head.
Other core mechanics of this game include shoulder charging an opponent with a ball. You can shoulder charge an opponent if you’re close enough and knock the ball out of their hand. It’s another simple cog in a complicated machine, where timing and strategy are everything. For example, there was a moment during my review period where my teammate and I were down a point and our opponents were about to finish the game with a simple hit. While the opponent was charging the ball, I slipped up behind them and shoulder charged them right before the throw, which bounced the ball out of their hand, sent the opponent flying, and allowed my teammate to catch the ball in mid-air and throw it back at the opponent, thus knocking them out. It was a scene out of an early 90s John Woo film. Perfectly executed, perfectly finished, sadly no doves. That’s what a shoulder charge can do for you in Knockout City.
The final core mechanic in the game is the ability to glide. Much like the gliding abilities in the overrated Zelda Breath of the Wild game, you are provided with a way to unleash an actual glider and fly your way away from a situation or around a map. Gliders are neat when you want to get somewhere quick, or when you want to save your butt from falling off a ledge. They can play into the game’s core mechanic strategies, which is yet another tool in the core mechanic tool belt. You will need it here and there, plus it’s fun to glide.
All of the above are the core mechanics of this game. They are simple to learn, simple to use, and provide a wide range of strategies when done right. All of these tools work well because the maps you play on are built for them. Each map in the game plays to the core mechanics built, so you will have large cityscape levels that have multiple tiers to them, where you can jump up using a bounce platform, grab a ball, then duck behind a rotating wall. You might have construction sites where you can use a wrecking ball to propel yourself across a map while avoiding enemies or throwing a ball without fear of immediate retaliation. Regardless, Knockout City features a good variety of maps that are creatively built with your mechanics in mind, which add layers of strategy to the gameplay, as good maps should. The maps are about the size of a Destiny 2 PvP map, minus all the details, and provide enough space for maneuvering in and out of a sticky situation. You won’t find them overly gorgeous or having that ‘wow, this looks great on my PlayStation 5’ sort of moment with them, but you will appreciate their construction with regard to core mechanics.
As for the competition, you have a 3v3 structure here, which could be improved with more players (6v6 is a good goal to get to at some point). The 3v3 can seem empty at times, though the different modes of gameplay help to alleviate that a bit. As it stands, 3v3 will give you restful moments to breathe a bit before diving back into gameplay. I would imagine that 6v6 would be absolutely chaotic, but maybe that is something the game needs as it grows. That 6v6 idea would leave little room for strategy and would severely change the dynamics of core mechanic execution.
Overall, the gameplay of Knockout City is built for everyone to pick it up and go straight out of the gate. It’s also built to make gamers feel comfortable with the core mechanics. With that intention in mind, the game nails it. I think that getting everyone on even ground is accomplished through simplified mechanics and more dependence on strategy, rather than overpowered gimmicks. This is what a competitive game should be, as it will only attract more and more people to it (see Fall Guys for details). This game will certainly not feel top-heavy with tryhards.
Customizations and Motivations
If I had one particular complaint about this game it is the amount of customization available right out of the box. There is no doubt that having something that is your own is important for gamer/game connection. Having that character that you want in a particular outfit with a particular logo and that particular hair color is vital for connecting with a game. Gamers love Skyrim for this, but Skyrim offers up a massive amount of gameplay in return, which provides the best of both worlds — deep customization and gameplay.
For Knockout City, the game comes with a huge amount of customization options and perks that can be bought or unlocked as you play the game. It almost feels like there was more concentration put on the customization versus the gameplay offerings. I do get it and I do understand that you’re buying a game at max $29.99 (or free if you have EA Play on Game Pass) and eventually there has to be a return, but much sooner than later people might get bored of the gameplay when the main motivation is to unlock customizations. Since there is no upgrading of characters (they really did keep it on even ground), your fallback is to unlock customizations to make yourself different. Competition and customizations are your two big reasons to play this game, and it feels like Velan Studios might be relying too heavily on the latter. As you level up in the game, you unlock items in the game, which have no barring on gameplay. It’s like unlocking items in Fall Guys, which is more for cosmetics than it is useful. By relying on this lopsided affair, the game runs the risk of losing people quickly, like Fall Guys is currently feeling.
This is only a perceived assumption and I’m glad that gamers can do what they want with a huge palette of customizable options available at the get-go. Again, there is something nice about customization and finding that unique ‘you’ in a game. Heck, adding the ability to form a gang that represents each other visually is a neat part of Knockout City. Tunnel Snakes are going to live again!
All of that said, Velan Studios laid out a road map that begins this coming week, where the first season of the game starts and multiple seasons will follow. Each season will bring new balls, new maps, and new ways to play the game, as well as new customizations. If they can consistently throw out meaningful content, much like Fortnite does, and keep the gameplay fresh, then my complaint is a moot point. I just have a fearful worry that customization is going to outperform gameplay content because I have seen it before and relying on customization to drive interest in a title is a losing cause. I always wish nothing but the best for developers when it comes to creating their vision, so here is hoping my cynicism is wrong.
Conclusion
Velan Studios’ Knockout City is a fun game that anyone can pick up and play. It has everything it needs to be a go-to competitive game that is destined to find its way regularly on an Esports schedule. If the promised content is consistently delivered, then it will certainly stick around for years to come.
