The Machines Arena

Overview

The Machines Arena can be best described as a mix of Diablo and Valorant, played in third-person as a top-down shooter. The game features two main modes, allowing players to play solo or with others through quick play and custom lobby options. Now in open beta, the game is accessible to everyone via the Epic Games Store.

Although the game currently lacks lore, there is potential for a storyline to be developed from the playable characters, which could enhance player engagement. The team behind The Machines Arena, Directive Games, has experience in game development, having published titles such as Ready Player One: Oasis, The Machines AR, and Super Kaiju. This expertise has been expanded upon through their newly-formed partnership with Axie Infinity creators, Sky Mavis. With this collaboration, Directive Games plans to bring a new flagship title to web3 gaming on the Ronin network.

To play, players need to download the game through the Epic Games Store. It is currently available only on PC, with minimum requirements including 20GB of hard disk space and a low-level graphics card, starting with the GeForce 760 range. There are no on-chain rewards or wallet connection capabilities at the moment, but planned rewards include digital collectibles usable within the game.

Gameplay

After downloading the game, players load into the main menu, which displays the different game modes, starting with the Tutorial Mode. This tutorial teaches players the basic game controls and modes they will encounter in multiplayer gameplay. The main menu also offers the ability to add friends to groups, add previous team members as friends, and view player performance statistics.

One of the two major game modes is called Death Run, a single-player mode where players progress through rooms, fighting NPCs of varying difficulties within a limited time frame. As players advance, they encounter increasingly challenging NPCs and boss fights. Player progress can be seen at the top of the screen, with each completed room filled in red. At certain points in this mode, players can enter rooms to upgrade their weapons, movement, health, and abilities, as well as choose to end their current run. Players must finish their run in an intermittent room for their score to count on the leaderboard.

The other main game mode is multiplayer, which can be accessed through quick play and custom lobby options in the main menu. Quick play places players into a new or ongoing match with random team members. Players are divided into red and blue teams, each consisting of four members. Both teams compete for objectives based on the game mode, which currently includes three options: Detonation, Skirmish, and Pushback.

In Detonation, teams are divided into Team Defender and Team Assault. The Assault Team's main objective is to grab the fuse and plant it at one of the two fuse sites. Once planted, they must defend it until it detonates, while the defending team tries to prevent this until time runs out.

Skirmish resembles a team deathmatch mode, where the two teams battle to be the first to reach 35 kills. Both teams have a five-minute time limit; after this, the team with the most kills wins.

The Pushback objective has both teams competing to push a cart into the opposing team's base. Each base is represented by a rectangle of their respective color. In this mode, there is also a timer, which, when expired, triggers overtime and causes each base to slowly move into the middle neutral zone. The team that has pushed the cart furthest towards the enemy's base wins at this stage.

In the custom lobbies option on the main menu, players can invite their friends and select the mode they wish to battle in. Currently, the only mode available to players is Pushback.

In both options, players can choose from three main roles when picking their Machine to battle with: Tank, Support, and Assault. The tanks currently available are Riot, Pyro, and Daye. Tanks have high health and abilities that help the team get closer to the fight by providing protection. In the support category, players can choose from Devol, Ozymandias, and Tesla, which are all ranged machines with healing abilities for their allies. The Assault category features damage dealers named Nightcore, Noble, and Zulu, all of whom have special abilities that deal significant damage to the opposing team.

Review

The Machines Arena has been in open beta for a while now, and while it’s great to see it available on the Epic Games Store and Steam, it feels like the game hasn’t evolved as much as I’d hoped. It’s also exciting that it will soon be available on PS5, with a mobile launch already underway on Android. The new game menu looks clean and polished, and navigating it is a breeze, which is definitely a step up. There’s also the addition of the PvE upgrades tab linked to Death Run mode, which allows you to enhance your weapons and stats. That’s a solid feature, but it’s one of the few updates that stand out.

That said, the lack of major improvements is hard to ignore. The graphics and animations still hold up well, but they haven’t changed much since the beta, and there are no new heroes or game modes to shake things up. The progression system remains absent, which would have been a nice touch to keep things interesting. On top of that, while the random lag isn’t frequent, it’s still a frustration. The inability to cancel abilities during combat is another issue that disrupts the flow, leaving you stuck in cooldown purgatory. Overall, the game's development feels slower than anticipated, and while it’s still fun, it’s clear that it needs a little more TLC to keep players coming back for more.