Stormdivers
Arcade lives on in Housemarque’s familiar-feeling battle royale
PC
Arcade or no arcade, there is still the occasional glimmer of the old Housemarque in Stormdivers. Yes, it’s a thirdperson battle-royale shooter in the same mould as Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds, as we drop into the map and methodically work our way through buildings looking for weapons and supplies. But soon, we begin to notice the telltale signs of the well-respected Finnish studio: Alpha’s brilliant short-range teleport, for instance. The ability is at once offensive and defensive, catapulting Alpha about 20 feet across the map. One moment, we’re using it to evade fire: the next, we whip past another player in a helix of particle effects and pump a shot into the back of their head.
“That teleport is sort of the closest thing we have as a basic moveset for a Housemarque game,” lead gameplay designer Tommi
Hartikainen says. “It’s sort of teleport-slashdash move which we have in pretty much all our games.” We set a marker and release a key to fling ourselves out of danger and into a better attacking position – and the swirl of dazzling sparkle that accompanies it is pure
Resogun, a welcome flash of technomancy in a drab environment. “This is a feel we’ve been perfecting for a long time, specifically with arcade games,” says head of publishing Mikael
Haveri. “We always took pride in making sure that we have the gameplay side of it nailed, and then the visual things are the reward, if you will. We’re entering a larger environment where people are already doing similar things, so we need to stay true to all of the Housemarque legacy standards.”
There’s significant pressure to do so. The concept of Stormdivers dates back to almost three years ago – it was to be “a multiplayer game with a lot of chaotic elements thrown into it,” Haveri says. “So you couldn’t sit still, you’d always have to be moving, and through that chaos you’d have to control your melee and shooting and survive.” This was long before battle royale blew up: Stormdivers’ announcement this year after Housemarque’s proclamation of ‘Arcade is dead’ drew plenty of ire from fans online believing the studio had now simply jumped on a bandwagon. “It stings,” Haveri says, “but then again it does give you a little motivation to say, ‘We’re sure about this, let us show how it actually works’. And then let’s see those comments, you know.”
There’s potential here. Our demo has us choose between three characters, each with their own ‘movement’ and ‘support’ ability on cooldown. We tend to gravitate towards Alpha the most, with his teleport-dash and a shield that he can take cover behind. Bravo’s jetpack makes him mobile, able to gain a height advantage at a moment’s notice, while his ability to drop a health-regenerating pool can save a firefight. Stealth-based Charlie is the trickiest to use at first, but will be deadly in
the right hands – her partial invisibility makes her faster and quieter. And her sound-blocking aura is one of Stormdivers’ most unique ideas: cast it, and it’ll muffle any gun noise made in its generous radius. Naturally, the abilities are all designed to work solo, but these three together in a squad could be devastating.
For now, we’re gliding from huge cliffs, dashing across terrifyingly open plains and skulking through forest hideouts alone. There’s an edge of mania to proceedings, especially when we catch sight of what we assume is the traditional ‘ring of death’ headed our way. In fact, the encroaching threat is more dynamic than we’re used to, host to all manner of storms. “Players usually avoid the tornado,” Hartikainen says. “But it does have some other additional features – a tornado is always moving towards a player, so if you track the tornado, you can actually find hostile enemies.” Lightning storms offer a similar advantage: if we get to higher ground and scan the horizon when one rolls in, the thunderbolts hit areas where remaining players might be hiding. Wind surges help close distance quickly, as we use our glider to catch the air currents and then dive back down; an unexpected eclipse proves the end for us, however, as the area is plunged into a crimson darkness and a cloaked assassin catches us unawares.
It’s startling how much of an effect these PvE events have on raising the pulse and pace of the match. “Every time you come to the island you should feel something familiar: the controls, the locations and so on,” Haveri says. “But everything outside the player should be changing.” It’s part of Housemarque’s effort to keep creating ‘hardcore’ games that reward skill and punish mistakes harshly. To that end,
Stormdivers’ regenerative health system (you collect Storm Anomalies to increase the rate of yours over a match) feels a little out of place. Some may argue that the tension of battle royale is bound up in careful preparation, and choosing to make your move only when you feel confident. In this respect, Stormdivers is far more arcadey than it is anything else. “If you decide to engage on a hostile, you need to make the commitment to it,” Hartikainen says. “If they start running away, you need to follow them to finish the fight – you can’t just snipe from afar, because they’ll go behind a corner and re-heal, right? Same thing if you’re being shot at in a wide open space: you should be able to respond in a way that will not make you damaged goods for the rest of the match.” Haveri chimes in: “If you look at Fortnite or
PUBG, you usually avoid engaging unless you know you have a clear advantage. Here we’re trying to lower that, so you want to engage more. And that same design dynamic is in picking items up, getting them equipped and in your inventory.” Stormdivers is at its best when played like a Housemarque game, rather than a battle royale: a zen kind of hokey cokey where you dash in and out, closing and creating space until your opponent missteps and becomes vulnerable. “This is where we’re playing on the Housemarque strengths,” he continues. “From our previous titles, you get tension from being on the edge – dodging bullets, rather than taking a step back. So we’re trying to perfect that, in a way that allows for the action.”
Still, there’s a way to go for Stormdivers yet: the shooting can feel completely toothless at times, with very little in the way of satisfying feedback. But the dev team are intently focused on what they have now, and are hoping to branch out into “more characters, places, environments, and even other modes” post-launch, Haveri says. For now, however, they’ll just have to trust that their fans will see enough arcade in the battle royale, and that others will see enough battle royale among the arcade. There may be some valuable new ground to cover between the two – if people remain curious enough about the genre. “From one perspective, you could say that, yes, Fortnite has won and that’s the end of that,” Haveri says. “But if you look at historically what multiplayer brought to the whole of gaming, it was just the beginning of a way of starting to interpret the genre. I think that battle royale is sort of a rebirth of that – and maybe we’re starting to see a downward spiral here, but I think that that’s exactly where there’s space for reinvention.”
Stormdivers is at its best when played like a Housemarque game, not a battle royale