Dropzone

Dropzone

GENRE: Free to play MOBA Strategy
PLATFORM: Windows
DEVELOPER: Sparkypants Studios

OVERVIEW

A free to play sci-fi themed MOBA RTS where players control a team of futuristic tanks trying to destroy alien hives and fend off other rival players in action packed, strategy focused, 1 v 1 PVP duels. Dropzone takes MOBA style gameplay and blends it with classic RTS where players must simultaneously control three units, each with their own individual skills, and battle against PVE and PVP enemies to earn points in fifteen minute battles.

KEY FEATURES

- Strategic MOBA Gameplay
- Control 3 key “Rig” units
- 9 Pilots from three available Classes
- Modular rig design to customize your units
- 15 minute PVP focused battles
- Free to play

GAMEPLAY

Whilst the main premise of the game is a MOBA based game with players fighting on single maps in fifteen minute duals, the game also heavily feels like traditional RTS games minus base building and focus directly on controlling units. With three different independent units to control, tank like vehicles known as Rigs, players will require both strategic mastery when building and customizing their vehicles and a high level of micromanagement to successfully control all three units at once, each having their own personal skills to use.

With the set time limit in a match each player must try to get as many “cores” as possible, purple items dropped when the PVE alien Kavash hives are destroyed, static nests on the match that constantly spawn AI controlled enemies. Each Rig can only pick up one core at a time, and players can try to take them from each other by destroying rival rigs through PVP; once acquired they must be brought to a central “uplink” terminal and uploaded to earn a point; the team who has gained the most points at the end of the match wins, with a draw going to sudden death and the first team to acquire another core being the winner.

PILOTS AND RIGS

There are currently nine available pilots to choose from that have their own key abilities and class: Gunner (DPS), Tank (damage soak) and Mechanic (support), when entering a match players are able to draft their three preferred pilots for the match. In matches and through daily quests players will earn XP and currency, which in turn unlocks new Rig Modules and allows players to buy them to customize their Rigs with a variety of weapons and gadgets.

UPGRADES

Each module equipped to a Rig has an upgrade value, this indicates how many times a Rig must be upgraded in the course of the battle before that ability is accessible. By destroying Kavash hives and killing off rival players the team will earn a communal XP and will eventually unlock an upgrade; here the player must decide which of their three Rigs will have the upgrade. Due to upgrades only affecting one Rig at a time, and modules being dependent on them, there is a lot of strategy involved at the Rig customization stage and will cater to different playstyles, whether focusing on trying to level up a single Rig to higher levels to unlock more powerful modules, or keeping a more balanced team and spreading the upgrades between all three Rigs.

MAP FEATURES AND SUB-OBJETIVES

Whilst the Hives and Central Uplink are the two main features of a map and the primary source of cores/points, there are other important features that can swing the tide of battle and help a player during the game. Watch towers will grant vision to a large portion of the map, essential for tracking where the enemy is, particularly if they have tried to access your side of the map through jump ramps. Boss spawn camps see large powerful bosses that, if destroyed, grant huge boosts to the killing team; if they are unsuccessful the bosses (and other threats in the match) can destroy the Rigs where they will be out of action until they respawn in their Team Base, a place they can return to at any time to also heal up.

With these different features on the map players have secondary sub-objectives they can try to complete, such as controlling all the watch towers, killing the boss, destroying a set number of Hives first, and will be granted instant points normally only earned through collecting cores.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENT

Currently Unknown