Elie at PC Gamer explains why Deadlock isn’t a MOBA or a third-person shooter anymore—it’s become a horror game instead, thanks to City Never Sleeps.
The most recent update, City Never Sleeps, brought six new heroes with it, and among them is the Rat King. He is large, he is quick, and he makes his home in the tunnels that run beneath the map. Elie plays Rem, a hero capable of roaming those tunnels to gather souls, and up until quite recently he kept clear of any trouble down there. That is no longer a possibility.
The Rat King Closes the Tunnels
The terror starts with Elie’s own eyes meeting something else’s. She is dodging through the tunnels, keeping to herself, when she spots a figure watching her from the mouth of a side passage. That figure is the Rat King, and it has seen her, and it is coming toward her.
Her whole arsenal is thrown against him without effect. She has no choice but to flee. What makes this difficult is that the map shuts off all exits and entrances during combat, leaving nowhere to go. Elie rushed straight into a grated exit, and she perished in that cold, dark spot.
A Repeated Death
Elie acknowledges she has jumped in fright at that enormous rat far more often than she wishes to recall. Now, whenever she steps into the tunnels, her blood turns cold, haunted by visions of him pursuing her and hurling Miguel, Jacques, or Abbie at her with an I.
Elie did not encounter the enemy Abrams while she was underground; she met him above ground, in one of the new districts called Chinatown. The horror has spread beyond the tunnels, and it came to her just the other night. She had walked into his path by chance, and at first she believed he had failed to notice her. She was mistaken.
Abrams and Seven
She glanced back only once and saw him still right behind her. Before she could register what was happening, she was shoved into the wall, and the enemy Seven materialized out of thin air to solo ult her for some ungodly reason.
Why This Feels Like Horror
Elie’s argument goes beyond the Rat King itself. She holds the view that the fear comes from something more fundamental: the fact that people playing together online are unpredictable and are almost always out for blood.
The City Never Sleeps update has made the game more frightening through its map design. The tunnels are tight spaces, and the game removes the exits from the map during combat. A player can thus find themselves cornered with no escape route available.
The Author’s Background
Elie is a news writer who loves horror games despite having a fear of being pursued. Outside of screaming and hiding, they can often be found playing metroidvanias or looking over their Pokemon TCG collection.
Before joining TechRadar Gaming as a staff writer, Elie studied at JOMEC in International Journalism and Documentaries. During that time and since then, they have devoted their free hours to filming short docs about Smash Bros. or any indie game that crossed their path.
What Makes It Scary
Deadlock’s dread springs from three things working together:
- A small room with no way out
- A foe strong enough to track you down
- A design that takes away your means of escape
The Verdict
The case for Elie’s point holds up well. Deadlock has always had its share of dread, yet the City Never Sleeps update has taken it further than anything that came before. The tunnels beneath the city have become a place of terror, and the Rat King serves as the ideal monster to haunt their depths.
Final Thoughts
The City Never Sleeps update has transformed Deadlock into something far beyond its earlier identity as a MOBA or a third-person shooter. It is now a horror game, and it is a frighteningly terrifying one.
The map traps anyone who enters it, and the tunnels are no safe haven for those who go there. Elie’s own experience makes that plain, as does the presence of the Rat King waiting within.
Players who have not yet tested the update will find that the game no longer offers a quiet path through the tunnels. Instead, they are filled with rats, and those rats are hungry.
Source material: “Deadlock isn't a MOBA or a third-person shooter anymore—City Never Sleeps has turned it into a horror game,” PC Gamer.
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