Ocean Drive Studio brings out a tense co-op rogue-lite with the release of Blackout Protocol.
Blackout Protocol is a co-op top-down shooter with rogue-lite elements. It was developed and published by Ocean Drive Studio. The studio previously developed Lost Eidolons, a turn-based tactical RPG.
Roguelite games have been around since the development of the game called Rogue Legacy in 2013, as it was the first game to coin the term Roguelite. Roguelite games are games that feature some but not all mechanics of a Roguelike. The principles behind their design can be similar, such as a platformer or even a tactics game similar to a roguelike, but with unique elements and mechanics.
Blackout Protocol encompasses this. It has a top-down view that makes it easy to strategize how to get passed either incoming waves or boss monsters, but it’s also important to make multiple runs to learn the different patterns and strategies that might work during that specific level. Another important element of this is teamwork.
There are a total of four playable characters to use in Blackout Protocol currently. First is Boy Scout, his abilities make him a suitable character for frontline playing, as he can push away enemies that surround him. Red is great with weapons with a slower reload speed because of her ability, which boosts her rate of fire and reload speed.
Next is Scalpel, SEVERANCE, which is her ability is an extremely high-risk but high DPS finisher that can be helpful in a tricky situation, so she is more suited to a close combat rapid-fire style before falling back and reloading to the cover fire of her teammates. The final Playable character is Beaker. She is currently the only support character, as her being able to restore chunks of health for herself and her teammates with her ability.
In Blackout Protocol, you are sent to deal with an area of the corporation you work for that has been infected. While it is possible to get through the early stages of the game solo, it is a little bit difficult as each floor has its unique design and task. Of course, once you die on the run, theirs no guarantee that the floor will be exactly the same.
For example, the first level’s mission is simple. Turn on the generator, but getting it done is a different story. The first time you spawn in, you have to go through the main doors, but the second time, you have to go through a side door that gives you a decent weapon and a Nethercube that gives you a power-up to start the round-off.
Nethercubes give interesting power-ups, and deciding which one to take is easy, but keep in mind which characters you are playing, their abilities, and the weapons you’re using. Of course, there are also support buffs that increase your health.
While it can be easy dealing with the hordes or small groups of infected at the beginning of the stage, it becomes a bit more difficult once you have turned the generator on because of the much stronger infected that come out with a smaller group of weaker infected. It’s easier to deal with this with more than one person on the team, as you’ll be able to take turns drawing the attention of the stronger enemy to give your ally time to either use their ability or reload.
That doesn’t mean you get thrown straight into the game without a tutorial. The game’s tutorial encompasses pretty much everything you will need to learn to figure out your abilities, as well as how to unlock blueprints and passive abilities. You start off the tutorial with about 10-20% of your health as well as a health debuff that greys out some of your bar, meaning you can’t regen your full health.
To gain passive abilities such as increased magazine size and dodge roll cooldown, you have to put points into them. You gather these points as you grind through the levels and can only deposit them at safe points. If you die in the level before you can assign them to a skill, you will lose all those points. These points aren’t the only thing you will pick up. You will also pick up weapon blueprints.
In the tutorial, you get your first weapons blueprint—an assault rifle. Most weapon blueprints will drop from the various monsters you kill in the game. The weapons have different classes to themselves, such as the SMG, which does physical damage; the Sawed-off Shotgun, which deals Psionic damage, and the Flamethrower, which deals damage over time.
There are two forms of damage in Blackout Protocol: physical and mental. Physical damage affects your health during combat, but mental damage affects the purple gauge just underneath your health bar. This is your Panic Gauge; if it runs out, you will go into a state of panic, and your surroundings will be affected until the gauge builds back up and your character calms down. Your enemies will have the same bar.
This is useful when you fight stronger enemies, as you can stun them long enough for you to either revive a teammate or, if solo, it gives you time to set up a gadget or find a health pack to heal. With Co-op play, there is, unfortunately, no way to turn off Friendly fire mode, so you have to be aware of where your allies are at all times.
Gadgets are important in missions, although you cannot equip them before a mission starts, as you will have to pick them up throughout the level. From grenades and other explosives to clone devices to help take the heat off yourself and your team in the middle of combat, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on them and pick them up when you can, especially if you know you will need them on the next floor.
There isn’t much of a storyline to Blackout Protocol, as your job is to essentially clear the sector of any enemies entirely. As such, there isn’t anything in terms of cutscenes or Lore that can be gathered as you go through the different levels.
The sound engineering was done well in Blackout Protocol. It was done in an incredibly immersive way, even though the game has a top-down third-person view rather than a first-person view. Minor things like footsteps echoing as your character walks, the sound of the alarms going off, or even the voice acting of the different characters as they talk to each other add to the overall experience.
There weren’t any bugs or glitches that would make the gameplay difficult, but it is not a game for solo play. While it is difficult to play solo, with the addition of teammates, you can easily get through most of the levels by grinding for points to add to the Passive skill tree.
The graphics and design of Blackout Protocol do a good job of echoing that immersive feel from the sound design. The appearance of each of the levels was well designed, and the character design for both playable characters and enemies does a good job of adding to that spooky feeling you get as you dive deeper into Section 13. The Playable Characters’ portraits are well designed, and the UI is well designed as well.
Overall, Blackout Protocol is a decent co-op rogue-lite with its unique tricks. With the game being in Early Access, there is a great amount of potential for the game to add content, such as more playable characters and levels.
