Both of these strategies work best when you're directly communicating with a team, and as such don't feature that heavily in solo matchmaking. Better still, a teammate can charge their throw and turn you into an airborne bomb, which you can subtly control to take out multiple foes at once. During matches, you can roll up into a ball and turn into a projectile that a teammate can throw, instantly knocking out enemies if you happen to connect with them. There are still some nuances at play where communication is a benefit, however. An opponent who is running for cover might be caught blindsided by a ball that manages to curve around an object they assumed they were safe behind, while a lobbed throw can trick a foe into thinking that you aren't even equipped with a ball before having one land on their head.Īll of these allow you to contribute to team play in a solo manner without needing to engage with more party-focused strategies, which makes it easy to feel like you're making a difference in a match without explicitly needing to communicate over voice chat. These throw variants offer some intense moment-to-moment gameplay decisions, too. Each of these moves is meant to give you different ways to catch out enemies, but also teach you that the same can be done back. You can pump-fake a throw, for example, to try and catch an opponent off guard, or change the flight of your throws with two different jumps that either curl or lob your throw, respectively. With a straightforward approach to how the action plays out, Knockout City also offers a limited number of ways to change up how these exchanges occur to constantly keep you on your feet.
Without the need to manually target enemies, Knockout City allows you to focus on timing and positioning instead, which makes its fast-paced action more manageable.
#KNOCKOUT CITY CHARACTERS WINDOWS#
You can quickly find yourself in an escalating ping pong match with another player, adjusting to shrinking catch timing windows with each exchange. In Knockout City, this applies a stacking effect to the ball, causing it to travel faster if thrown again quickly after being caught. Just like in the real game of dodgeball, you can catch balls tossed your way to avoid taking a hit. And when you start coming up against more savvy foes, additional mechanics start becoming more important. The balance between the two creates a dynamic that allows Knockout City to be approachable enough for casual play but still retain smaller complexities for competitive play to leverage. Judging how much power to put behind a shot and balancing that with the distance between you and another player is critical, and just one of the many micro-decisions you'll need to make during each skirmish. You can take a longer time to charge up for a faster swing of the arm but expose yourself in the process by limiting your movement speed to do so. Knockout City makes this both simple and satisfying by automatically targeting enemies for you, but giving you control over the distance and power of each throw.
In between the satisfying thunks of direct hits and the grace of each character's movements, Knockout City features a satisfying level of depth that balances its pickup-and-play nature with a compelling competitive element that's difficult to walk away from.Įach of Knockout City's rotating modes rests on the fundamentals of finding a ball and trying to hit opposing players twice with it for a knockout, racking up your team's score in the process. But once you start factoring in deployable gliders, balls that can trap opponents in cages, and throwing techniques that can bend your shots around corners, Knockout City's identity starts to bubble to the surface.
Knockout City's colorful, cartoonish aesthetic plays host to a relatively straightforward game of dodgeball, putting two teams against each other in a war waged with red rubber balls.
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