I knew next to nothing about Deadlock when I got playtest access a couple weeks back. I hadn’t looked at any illicit YouTube gameplay footage. I hadn’t perused the then-unsanctioned subreddit. Operating with only the vague awareness that Valve was making a third person MOBA shooter, I fired up the closed alpha without knowing what I’d be looking at. Scifi, maybe? Valve does a lot of scifi stuff, right?
Instead, as the main menu loaded, I was met with a spooky strings-and-piano track straight out of a Tim Burton joint as the camera sank between city buildings to settle on a smoky city street littered with candles and spectral pigeons. A burly, bespectacled half-demon detective leaned against the entryway to a sort of occult corner store, its exterior adorned with hanging bells, crow feathers, and a banner advertising its sale of “BEER, TALISMANS, GROCERIES.” At the end of the block, a distant troop of candle-headed puppets marched in lockstep across the intersection.
“Welcome to the Cursed Apple,” Deadlock’s tutorial exclaimed. I could not have been more thrilled.
If there’s a term for the aesthetic of Deadlock’s accursed alt-New York, I don’t know it. Occultpunk, maybe? Neo Wiccanoir? Its current hero roster includes a fedora-wearing, interplanar pyromaniac, a living gargoyle, a femme fatale with a haunted arm, and a Columbia professor who got turned into a star in a bottle by a spacetime hole. In-game, you battle alongside battalions of candle golems across city streets lit by art nouveau streetlamps so you can battle the opposing team’s towering eldritch idols.
There are ritual circles on the rooftops. There are phantoms peering out from open elevators. The Cursed Apple is a city where everyone is dabbling in forces that nobody should be. It’s a little bit steampunk, a little bit pulp horror, and a lot Fallen London; the wardrobes might be from the 1930s, but the black magic bodega still has an ATM sticker on the front door. Whatever you call it, Deadlock’s vibe is refreshingly weird.
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There’s a lot of Dota 2 DNA in the character design language of Deadlock’s heroes, but it’s a cast that feels more cohesive, even in its early development state. Where Dota 2’s roster was built around a scattershot of remixed Warcraft 3 heroes, Deadlock’s disparate character concepts—from the pompadoured monster hunter to the walking junkpile—feel like Valve reveling in a setting that it can sketch out from scratch, something the studio hasn’t done since Team Fortress 2. It’s an early glimpse at a metropolis-sized melting pot of cultures, creatures, arcana, and the occasional guy made of goo.
And not only that: It’s funny. Deadlock’s map is far from finished, but it’s already scattered with delightful bits of worldbuilding absurdity. Parked tankers and trucks carry branding for “Fogwell’s Bioluminescence” or “Five Eyes Meats (from concentrate),” while ads for a firm of reanimation specialists are offering free estimates and same-day service on “fluid restoration” and “mortal preservation.” It’s an echo of the kind of Valve humor that I loved in TF2’s class shorts and item descriptions, filtered through a world where you can buy occult goods at the same place you get your produce.
I’m not a MOBA guy. Having to make ability and item build decisions mid-game makes me feel afraid. But Deadlock’s aesthetic is already so compelling that I’m willing to stomach my incompetence if it means getting to watch Valve fill its latest sandbox.