When word got out that thousands of gamers were already playing Valve’s “secret” shooter Deadlock on Steam back in August, the first reaction from many was: How do I get my hands on this?
Since then, many more players have joined the invite-only playtest, allowing them to get their first look at the project. Valve made the game public on Steam a few weeks ago but hasn’t given the game a release date. “Deadlock is a multiplayer game in early development," Valve wrote on the game’s Steam page.
If you're not already playing and are curious, here's what you should know.
What Is Deadlock and Why Are People So Excited About It?
Valve, the famed developer of franchises such as Half-Life, Portal, and Counter-Strike, has slowed its development of new titles a lot, so any new IP is cause for excitement. Deadlock is a six-versus-six team game that combines the hero shooter personality of, say, Overwatch, Apex Legends, and Valve's own Team Fortress 2 with some of the multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) mechanics popularized by League of Legends and Valve's Dota 2.
A MOBA typically has elements like home bases, towers that each side must defend, minions that help the main characters in fights, and a progressive leveling up of skills through the course of a match. If you've never played a MOBA, Deadlock can feel overwhelming at first due to the resource management it requires on top of the action-shooter elements.
OK, I’m Sold. How Do I Play?
You'll need a Steam account and an invite to the playtest. Some players have been randomly invited by Valve to play the game, possibly based on their history with other Valve titles, but the easiest way to get in is to ask someone in the playtest to invite you, which is an in-game menu option.
In order to see which of your Steam friends is playing Deadlock, visit the game's page and look on the right panel under Friends Who Play.
An invite may take a day or more to get to you once it's sent. When you have it, you can download and install the game.
This might be a good place to warn you: Deadlock is a work in progress, and as such it's liable to change a lot between now and its official release. As of this writing, there's only one map, called “street_test,” and the roster of 21 heroes and their skills could evolve with future updates.
My play group has found the game remarkably stable and polished considering it’s so early in its development, but that doesn't mean you won't encounter bugs, glitches, or crashes in the game. The playtest is free; don't expect the kind of customer support or full-featured experience you'd get with a retail game.
Learning the Ropes (and Rails)
First thing's first: Whether you have MOBA experience or not, Deadlock's set of tutorials under Learn to Play are a must. They'll show you how objects and controls work in Get Started, how to get acquainted with the game's 21 characters and their skillset "builds" in Hero Training, and how the paths leading to victory work in Lane Training, a guided quest through the city map.
Once you've completed those three guides, you'll have the basics of how the controls work, how to purchase and level up your character's items and abilities during a match, and how souls, the currency of the game, work.
The most important changes from, say, a squad shooter game, are understanding how the map's four colored lanes work, how to navigate using the overhead zip-line system, and why it's so important to shoot the green or orange orbs that float up when minions, heroes, and other items and characters are defeated. Your character won't gain skills quickly enough if you and your team don't collect enough souls from those orbs, and it'll be hard to win the match if you don’t gain enough to level up your builds.
Once you have an idea of the game, you can Spectate from the main menu to see how a full match works, go into Heroes to start figuring out which character you want to try, or select Resources to get a closer look at the items available in the Curiosesity Shop. This contains the item upgrades you'll be buying as the game progresses in three categories: Weapons (orange upgrades to your shooting and ammo, basically), Vitality (green heals and armor skills), and Spirit (purple skills that buff your abilities or affect abilities of your enemies).
You can start inviting friends to your party at any time by using the drop-down at the top right in the main menu called Play With Friends.
Match Play
Here's what you probably don't want to do too early: jump into a full-blown Standard Match against experienced players before you've had a chance to practice.
Under Play in the main menu, you'll find Play Deadlock, for standard matches; Sandbox Mode, which allows you to practice alone or with your party without competing; and most usefully at first, the options for Public Bot Match or Private Bot Match. With Private Bot Match, you and up to five of your friends can play against a bot team and set the difficulty: Easy, Medium, or Hard. Public Bot Match will supplement your team with online players who aren't in your party.
My gaming group found the Private Bot Match option to be a great way to get acclimated and to scale up from Easy to Medium to Hard while learning the characters. Within two or three days of playing, we were able to defeat the Hard mode, which is still much easier than playing a Standard Match against experienced players.
Understanding Phases and MOBA Quirks
The overall goal of the game, at least in this playtest, is to overtake your enemy's base way at the top of the map. To do that, however, might take a while and involves completing several objectives.
Your character will be assigned one of the four colored lanes to start; two of those lanes will be doubled up with members of your team, the other two will have a single player. You'll start off with no abilities or build items enabled, but very quickly you'll be able to pick from one of your four abilities (the ones assigned 1, 2, 3, or 4 on your keyboard) to start with.
The first 10 minutes of the game are called the Laning Phase, and you're expected to stay in your lane and begin taking out minions and collecting souls to help your team start leveling up. Minions holding flags heal their players, so it’s not a bad idea to take those out first. You will encounter hero characters from the opposing team, but it's not essential that you try to kill them as quickly as you might in a shooter game. Since MOBAs are battles of attrition, you'll want to focus on progressing your lane as much as possible without dying too early instead of chasing down enemy heroes for the kill.
In what's called the mid-game phase, you'll encounter Guardians, knights defending the lane; Walkers, which are huge robot characters blocking your path; and Elder Guardians, who stand as a side-by-side pair, blocking entry to the enemy's base. Taking out these enemies unlocks Flex Slots in your inventory, allowing you to add extra items to your build. You can start to swap onto other lanes to help your teammates, defend your Guardians and base, or to complete objectives.
The endgame involves taking out two enemy shrines on either side of their base, which makes the enemy Patron vulnerable. The Patron exists as a flying golem at first, then once it's taken enough damage, becomes a stationary orb. Killing the enemy Patron ends the match (but make sure yours doesn't get killed first).
Deadlock requires players to keep an eye on their home base, Guardians and Patron while attacking the enemy's lanes and base, so communicating with your team and monitoring progress on the map frequently are essential for victory.
General Tips for Getting Comfortable With Deadlock
For my game group, the part that was the most overwhelming was the sheer number of upgrades and knowing what they all do while selecting in the heat of battle. Valve has implemented a system of community builds within the game that can be marked as favorites and used by players on the fly. That takes a lot of the guesswork out of knowing whether an item will complement your character's abilities.
At least until you're comfortable creating your own builds, stick with popular community ones. If you have time while you’re waiting to respawn, you can take a closer look and swap out items (you can sell items you bought early to purchase more useful ones if you run out of souls).
Don’t forget to upgrade your abilities when points become available to do that. Allocate points based on which abilities you use most. Community builds also include advice on what order to do these upgrades and when to deploy them.
The tutorial stresses this, but it bears repeating: Focus on shooting soul orbs, especially orange ones, early in the game. Collecting as many souls as possible will get you better and pricier upgrades. You'll notice a big difference in your character's effectiveness once you start buying build items.
Don't use your zip-line boost at the start of the game; it has a long cooldown, and you'll need it later to quickly go up your lane after respawning.
Some actions in the game, like transporting the Spirit Urn to its altar or taking out the optional mid-map boss at the very center, aren't always necessary to win. They're optional, but if your team is struggling, they could give your entire squad the boost it needs to push through to victory in the last phase.
As with any hero shooter game, you'll have more fun as you get comfortable with the characters you're playing and get accustomed to the abilities of the heroes you're playing against. Standard Match requires you to pick your three top characters in order of preference, so getting used to at least two or three of the Deadlock heroes is a good thing to focus on when you start out. As you keep going, you'll have a better understanding of how the different characters counter each other and which team composition works best for you and your group of friends.
Valve hasn't set a date to end the playtest for Deadlock or even stated whether there’ll be an end date, but it could happen at any time. So enjoy the game preview while it lasts!
