The studio that made a name for themselves with The Order: 1886 return with something entirely different.
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In 2014 developer Ready at Dawn made a name for itself with the controversial release of The Order: 1886. The developers themselves were fairly open about the fact that a substantial amount of the development time was spent creating the graphics engine; their own amazing piece of tech that could render realistic worlds, truly life-like characters, and heart-stopping action. They spent month after month working on it, in the process delaying the game several times so that they could fine tune every little technical detail, from the way Sir Galahad’s cape danced in the breeze to the way every unique object reacted to the player’s touch.
Once launch came around, the game turned out to be something of a disappointment, and because of this less than stellar reception, many expected Ready to Dawn to just slowly disintegrate and disappear from the gaming map, and worse yet, that their amazing tech would be forgotten.
That didn’t happen, though, and they’re back. This time they’ve got a very different project: Deformers. This new offering is an arena combat game where cute, ball-like beings of nearly every colour and design ram one another on small platforms, shoot at each other, and generally make simply existing a chore for their opponents. The game is built with the same technology that powered The Order: 1886, and shows just how broad the engine truly is, but how does the game beneath the engine fare? Well, that’s what we’re here to find out.
We’ll say this immediately because it’s important: Deformers cannot be enjoyed offline. There’s no offline split-screen, so the only way to actually enjoy the colourful rabble is if everyone decides to fork over the necessary cash and has a stable internet connection. This move is a little controversial to say the least, since other party games of a similar nature have relied heavily on an offline audience.
In terms of what you get for your money, Deformers offers a handful of modes, where most involve rolling around like the ball-shaped being you are, and shoving opponents off the side of the arena, or simply hitting them until they go splat. When opponents die they emit the goo they consist of, and if you casually roll over some of this goo, then you grow larger, and that means having more power on the battlefield, but you’re also more vulnerable to enemy attacks. Beyond that, it’s possible to form yourself into a square as a defensive move, use power-ups, and more. It certainly appears as though we have a narrow but strategically deep multiplayer-centric title here, but wait, because there’s a number of fundamental flaws present, and they drag the overall experience down in crucial ways.
You see, the maps in Deformers are quite large, and your little cozy ball of loveable goo is quite small. Sure, you can grow larger, but in order to ram into your opponents you must first charge up using the R2 button (on PlayStation 4) and then release it in hopeful anticipation, but this rarely results in a direct hit, even in small spaces. Actually, 95% of the time you simply spam the button in the vague hope that your charged attack actually connects with something, but more often than not, several minutes can pass by without anyone losing a single life, instead simply firing blindly into space. That’s why you can aim and fire with the R1 button, but this particular feature feels neither sharp, responsive, nor effective in combat, and this is due to the fact that opponents, yourself included, move too quickly. The only truly useful tools are the pick-ups, but this advantage is brief.
And that’s… well, Deformers. There are Team Deathmatch and Deathmatch modes, and if you get tired of either of these there’s Form Ball, a kind of Rocket League-esque game, where you must push an overly sized football into the opposing team’s goal. Unfortunately for the latter, this is neither innovative nor particularly exciting.
We end with the Workshop, where the game is allowed to shine. Here you’re able to buy designs for your little character, and luckily Ready at Dawn has filled the game to the brim with silly costumes that both give the player the motivation to unlock more, but also incentivises you to have several characters ready to battle at any one time. You constantly earn extra credits to unlock new costumes and accessories, and although it’s not deep in any way, it is fun… and you get to have a rolling, smiling watermelon.
All in all, Deformers doesn’t do very much, and when it does do something, it’s very much hit and miss. There are plenty of vibrant colours on display here, it’s filled with interesting visual detail, and it facilitates the joy of creation, but that is really all it does to make the game stand out from the crowd. If you’re going to make a multiplayer-centric title such as this, there needs to be strategic depth, and there’s simply none of that to be had here. Sorry Ready at Dawn, back to the drawing board… again.
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Keyword: Deformers