Deadlock is an in-development video game by Valve that combines the mechanics of MOBAs with the class-based structure of hero shooters. Its setting involves an alternate version of Prohibition-era New York City, combining occult magic with high technology. Taking place in a third-person perspective, the game places a large emphasis on teamwork and proper building of items, while de-emphasizing aim ability and resource management.
The main conflict involves that of the Amber Hand and the Sapphire Flame, with two teams of six heroes attempting to destroy their enemy's Patron, so that the winning team may exploit the power of their own. To accomplish this, heroes gain stats and abilities through killing mass amounts of creep-like minions called "troopers", and also their enemies. By leading troopers to enemy structures along four symmetrical lanes, heroes allow themselves to destroy the enemy base, culminating in victory.
Deadlock is currently in a free-to-play closed beta, where Steam users with access to the game may invite other players. The beta was first released to the public on 2024-05-03, and the embargo against outside discussion was lifted on 2024-08-23 - coinciding with the release of a Steam page. The game rapidly increased in players during the beta, going from under 3,000 to over 150,000 in a month, according to SteamDB. The development process involves major gameplay patches once every two weeks, with occasional minor patches a few days after major patches.
The game itself runs on the Source 2 engine for 64-bit computers, running natively on Windows and using Steam Play to run on Linux. It has localization support for several languages, yet only has English audio. The game's menus are coded entirely in XML, CSS, and JavaScript using Valve's Panorama framework.
Basic mechanics
Deadlock is a third-person MOBA shooter. Unique heroes face off against each other in two teams of six. Players gain a currency called "souls" (
) by killing enemies, which they use to become stronger by buying items and levelling up. Each team aims to destroy enemy structures, which leads to them destroying the Patron, upon which the game is won.
The main attributes that heroes aim to increase are put into three categories: Weapon, Vitality, and Spirit. Weapon concerns gun damage, Vitality concerns health and sustain, and Spirit concerns spirit power, which is used in abilities. Heroes buy items that are categorized in this way, using shops that take souls as currency. When an item in that category is purchased, they gain an inherit boost in that area, in addition to the other item effects. Items become increasingly expensive the more powerful they are, in four tiers of 500+, 1250+, 3,000+, and 6,300+ souls. In addition, each hero can only hold twelve items initially, four in each category, but can unlock four more "flex slots" through taking objectives.
Each hero has four unique abilities, which can individually be levelled up three times using ability points. Heroes gain ability points by levelling up and destroying objectives. Heroes initially choose to unlock their three basic abilities, and then their ultimate ability. Their abilities become unlocked at certain soul thresholds: 0, 400, 1,500, and 3,000 for their ultimate. When they want to level up their abilities, they spend their ability points. Each level of an ability costs increasing ability points per tier: 1, 2, and 5.
Damage is split into spirit and gun damage. Spirit damage usually comes from abilities, while gun damage usually comes from weapons and melee attacks. Spirit damage usually increases with spirit power, which can also affect other attributes, such as ability duration and cooldown. Damage is reduced by that type's resistance, which stacks multiplicatively. It is prevented by bullet or spirit shields, which are unaffected by resistances, and which regenerate after 60 seconds after being depleted - or 20 seconds while partially depleted.
All heroes have universal movement abilities such as jumping, sprinting, dashing, sliding, ledge climbing, and wall jumping. Heroes with a sprint bonus gain increased speed while they're out of combat. By using regenerating stamina bars, players can spend their stamina to perform more complicated maneuvers, such as rolling, double jumping, air dashing, and fast sliding. Heroes gain infinite ammo while they are sliding, and can slide down slopes without using stamina.
Heroes
Before each game starts, each player selects at least three heroes to play for that match. Only one of each hero can exist in a match, and the player can choose three tiers of preferences: Selected, Priority, and High Priority. One of these heroes are randomly chosen for the player at the start of the match, and the higher priority the player's selection, the more likely they will receive that hero.
Heroes do not have officially defined roles, and most heroes are capable of performing functions such as farming, dealing damage, taking objectives, and disrupting the enemy. That said, most heroes lean towards a particular playstyle, and are better off exploiting that playstyle rather than trying to be something they're not. For instance, heroes with wide-reaching spirit damage abilities tend to be more supportive than heroes whose abilities are all based around maximizing bullet damage. A hero with a variety of different abilities may have a variety of viable builds.
There are currently 21 heroes available in Deadlock:
Items
Each player starts out with the ability to hold twelve items, purchasable at shops placed around the map. Each item is categorized as either Weapon, Vitality, or Spirit, and a player can purchase four items from each category. Each team can also unlock four additional item slots, which can hold items from any category. These are called "flex slots", and one flex slot is unlocked after certain enemy structures are destroyed: every Guardian, one Walker, every Walker, and one Shrine.
Items are divided into four tiers based on how many souls each item costs: 500, 1,250+, 3,000+, and 6,200+. Every item has a set of attributes that enhances the stats of its bearer. Weapon stats tend to enhance gun damage, Vitality stats tend to enhance health, and Spirit stats tend to enhance abilities. They also have inherent attribute that are universal to every item per category, which becomes more potent the higher tier they are.
There are 117 items in Deadlock: 41 Weapon items, 39 Vitality items, and 37 Spirit items.
Match structure
Overview
The broad goal of the game is to acquire a currency called "souls" () to increment your hero's power to destroy enemy structures. Souls act as both experience points for your hero and currency to spend on items. Your level is based on how many total souls you've acquired during the game, while your current souls are used as money to purchase items. Your hero will also acquire ability points through levelling up, and your team gains souls and ability points globally by destroying structures.
The structures that you have to destroy per lane are, in order, the Guardians, the Walkers, and the Base Guardians. Inside the enemy base are two Shrines, which when destroyed exposes the Patron, which finally turns into the Weakened Patron. Once the Weakened Patron is destroyed, the destroying team wins the game. Structures are immune to damage until their preceding structure is destroyed, and all structures except for Guardians have backdoor protection, which is removed when troopers are near them. This protection decreases damage received by 80%, while also rapidly healing the structure.
Laning
At the start of every match, heroes face off against each other in four distinct lanes: York, Greenwich, Broadway, and Park. These lanes are named after their colours, which are yellow, green, blue, and purple. Heroes are randomly assigned into lanes, influenced by a hidden MMR value. There will always be two duo lanes and two solo lanes per team, although players can switch lanes as they wish.
During this laning phase, players attempt to kill enemy troopers, which give half of their souls to the player that killed them, and releasing the other half of their souls into the air. The trooper soul will burst if it isn't destroyed by a player, giving the killer the souls. An ally destroying the trooper soul is called a last hit, while an enemy destroying a trooper soul is called a deny, because the enemy gets those souls instead.
Various parts of the map open up to players at set times. Small jungle camps spawn at 2 minutes, which are easy to kill. Breakable boxes and statues spawn at 3 minutes, which can be destroyed to have a chance of receiving either souls or a small permanent buff. Medium and large jungle camps spawn at 7 minutes, which are much harder to kill. And the midboss spawns at 10 minutes, alongside two temporary power buffs at each side of the map, as well as the Spirit Urn - which must be delivered from one side of the map to the other.
If a player has more souls than their enemy, and destroys their Guardian sooner, they're considered to have won the lane, achieving an advantage over the other. Once enough Guardians are destroyed, players naturally transition into the midgame, where they attempt to take the enemy Walkers. According to the in-game match statistics, laning phase officially ends after 9 minutes, although in practice it can end sooner or later.
Midgame
Around this time, players have gained enough power to utilize their abilities and start defining a particular playstyle to focus on. They will then roam the map looking to take objectives, and kill enemies to prevent them from doing the same. The structure of the game is much less defined due to heroes no longer needing to stay in one lane to gain souls, having the option to push multiple lanes, farm the jungle, or kill enemies. In any case, the goal is to become strong enough to destroy the enemy Walkers.
The consequences of laning phase come to bear during this time period. A team going into the midgame with no structures destroyed has a large disadvantage compared to a team with all Guardians and perhaps a walker. Farming and souls gained are critical here, as small advantages tend to snowball into larger advantages later on. The losing team has to make up for lost farm by clearing out their jungle and pushing lanes, while the winning team will attempt to take large objectives such as the midboss and Spirit Urn.
The midboss is a giant monster in the middle of the map that requires a team effort, or a particularly strong hero, to kill. When the midboss spawns, a roar will echo for all players. When it's at half health, it will roar again. When it's dead, its death will be announced to all players, and a glowing crystal called the Rejuvenator will slowly fall down. When the rejuvenator is captured, the team that took it will gain temporary buffs, including their troopers having 50% more health, and the ability for each hero to respawn 50% faster - but only once.
The Spirit Urn is a glowing urn that shows up on one side of the map every 5 minutes, needing to be carried to the other side by a hero. When carried, that hero is disarmed, silenced, cannot teleport, and has bonus sprint speed. When successfully captured, every player on that team gains a large amount of souls, including bonus souls and an ability point for the carrier.
If a team fails to make a comeback, the game may end quickly due to the overwhelming power of the enemy heroes. But if both teams remain on equal footing, or one is unable to push into the other's base, then the game will extend into the lategame.
Lategame
The lategame is where heroes approach the peak of their power, building increasingly expensive items in order to achieve more explosive effects. Heroes at this point will have obtained significant amounts of souls, items, and ability points. Most structures will be destroyed by this point, with the main fights occurring within each team's base in an attempt to destroy the Patron. Individual fights are less emphasized compared to large group teamfights, and picks on individual heroes become harder.
During this phase, the maximum extent of each hero's power becomes more apparent, with harder carries becoming more difficult to answer compared to more supportive heroes. Abilities with large amounts of initial damage become less useful than abilities with low initial damage, but generous scaling. Heroes also change their builds in order to focus on teamfights instead of objectives, and resistances become more important than pure damage output.
Net worth disparities also occur within each team, where certain players have vastly more souls than others. As each player's wealth increases, it becomes more difficult to make use of their limited item slots, and so they must sell items bought earlier in the game. The limit of four active items also comes up, preventing purchasing items that would be useful for the situation. Item builds at this point involve maximizing a hero's potential within the limited resources that they are allowed to purchase.
Of course, once the Weakened Patron is destroyed, the game is won, and the cycle begins anew.