An Interesting Game Mechanic – Outriders

There’s a game coming out on April 1st named Outriders. It’s a cover-shooter with superpowers, so nothing special there. It offers solo and co-op play, nothing special there either. The basic plot is that Earth is doomed and a sleeper ship has been dispatched to colonise Enoch, an Earth-like world about 80 years away. You play an Outrider, an explorer/mercenary type with the task of finding out what’s what on the planet. Of course, Enoch holds a deadly secret and blah, blah, now you have to save humanity with lots of bullets and some awesome new powers. It’s different from other game plots, and yet also the same. I’m underselling this: I’m interested enough in finding out what’s what that I plan to play it. If you’d like to see what you think, there’s a demo available for PC, PS4/5 and XBox, which will be available right up to the release date. Link above.

So, more of the same, but there’s a mechanic to this game I find fascinating. The mechanic itself is different, but not so much: in order to heal within a fight, you need to kill things. Each of the four classes has a slightly different mechanism, but they all revolve around you getting HP back when an opponent dies. My personal favourite, for example, is the Trickster, who heals when they kill someone within a certain (short) range. Essentially, you need to play aggressively to win. This has an interesting effect on boss fights.

Typically, due to the limitations of game AI and the lack of imagination of designers, developers make boss fights hard by tossing in adds. You don’t get to face the boss alone, no. Instead, he’ll summon dozens of minions to chip away at your HP and make it impossible to focus on the boss. You need to diminish the opposition and then work fast on the boss before more grunts turn up. Frankly, I find this annoying.

There are two boss fights (one a lesser boss) available in the Outriders demo. I won’t spoil anything by revealing the nature of the fights, but you basically have a fight against a serious boss, solo, and a fight against a lesser boss, with minions. The big boss fight is way harder, despite him having no support. Why? Because minions are your healing mechanism. Yes, the minions make it harder to focus on the boss. They shoot at you and chip away at your HP while their leader is trying to burn you alive. But, if you get low on health, you run over and kill one: instant HP! With the solo fight, you have to be far more tactical, seeking cover and watching out for lingering damage effects. You have to try to kill the boss and you know you’re not going to be able to heal any damage until he’s toast. It totally reverses the general strategy of this kind of game. I like minions in Outriders.

Anyway, if you’re into this kind of thing, the demo takes an evening to play through and I think it’s worth looking at. And it has an interesting game mechanic.