It reminded me of the fast and furious nature of some of the best RTS matches I had seen in esports, which is something Sparkypants intended.

The overall experience really wore me out, but in a good way.

And I understood the need for total map awareness, as the vision towers were important to see what my opponent was up to. But before the day was done, and more than 30 matches under my belt against devs and the AI, I was actually starting to master the hotkeys and dividing my team up. When I started, I kept my team together at all times and rarely used anything other than the basic attack. Some of the devs have mastered dividing their team up to take on three separate objectives at once, while memorizing the hotkeys for each of the various special abilities that a character has. It kept the game at a frenetic pace, knowing I only had 15 minutes to get as many points as possible, and I had to figure out the most efficient way to do it while keeping my opponent in check. You get experience from killing hives and uploading cores, but you can also go for different objectives, like controlling all vision towers around the map for two points, or killing 10 sergeant aliens for four points. For having such simple mechanics, Dropzone gives you a lot of stuff to keep tabs on. The hives respawn after a short time, but with more AI defenders and hit points. Each time I played, I tried to refine my tactics and adapt to how my opponent was leveling their units. In another I got my mechanic to level 4 first so he had a better heal. In one game I maxed out my gunner to level five to unlock his super DPS ability. It definitely made for some interesting choices. All experience is pooled, so if your tank has a cool ability that unlocks at level 4, you can focus on him, while your other characters stay at level 1. The minor twist is that you have to choose which character to allocate that level to. The premise my sound simplistic, but when the action started, it proved to be very intense as I tried to stay ahead of my opponent either by uploading cores, or destroying his rigs and grabbing his cores to upload.Īs you’d expect, characters level up over the course of a match. To score points, you have to destroy alien hives at static positions around the map, pickup the cores that they drop, and upload them at the center of the map. That flexibility is welcome.ĭropzone’s format is equally straightforward: get as many points as possible before the 15-minute time limit expires, with ties going to sudden death. If you want more crowd control from a mechanic, you can build a loadout that freezes units in place or slows them down. So if you want more firepower, you can build a gunner loadout that focuses on area of effect and higher DPS. But all the characters can be customized with various loadouts that have been unlocked during previous play sessions. For example Widget and Turbine are both mechanic characters, but Widget has a better heal than Turbine does. There are, however, different variations of each class based on the character. The setting is futuristic sci-fi, so the characters pilot mech-like ‘rigs,’ with the tank there to soak up damage, the gunner as dishing out DPS, and the mechanic supporting. Right now, tank, gunner and mechanic are the only classes revealed. Players build a team of three characters from five classes.

Part of this is due to the simple setup-Dropzone isn’t a game of a hundred characters. I understood what was happening as a spectator before anything was explained to me in-depth. To my surprise, before the 15-minute match was complete, I found myself cheering when a map point was saved, or a key defensive maneuver that changed momentum, while appreciating the use of an opportune heal or special ability.

Dropzone gameplay