Three or four games into Swarm, League of Legends’ new PvE bullet heaven riff on games like Vampire Survivors, I could feel myself getting the hang of the controls, the characters, and the items I most liked to use—but I was sick of dying to those damn beach balls.
Riot Games turned a large group of media members loose on the very chaotic, extremely fun game mode at an event on Riot’s campus, and the yelps of frustration and glee from teams trying to coordinate against the unstoppable waves of enemies were quick to follow. While the mode couldn’t be more different from a standard game of League—WASD movement, constant auto-attacks, trying to figure out where Yuumi is instead of just banning her before the game starts—it still manages to retain the elements that make individual champions shine while throwing an ungodly amount of enemies at them.
The mode itself comes with a light storyline connected to the game’s newest Anima Squad skin line. After you select one of the available Anima Squad champions to fight against the attacking Primordians in Final City, the waves of enemies grow stronger and stronger until you have to fight some familiar faces as Primordian bosses to clear a level.
That said, this isn’t remotely a mode that takes itself too seriously, and I found myself laughing more often than not whenever I died. Content with trying out new augments like the UwU Blaster and just surviving as long as possible, I quickly gravitated toward speedier characters that could dish out damage or get movement buffs, like Jinx and Riven. In a Q&A session after the playtest itself, the Swarm developers revealed that most of them gravitated toward characters they already liked playing in League—so no worries if you see all the differences in this mode and are wondering if your main will still feel good to you.
And then there were the beach balls. Probably the thing most people playing expressed frustration about, the beach balls were spit out by large enemies and came in “pretty big” and “way too big” varieties, damaging you along the way if you didn’t get out of their path, which was surprisingly tough to do. For me, it was just difficult to remember the beach balls were things that actually hurt me when my screen was getting crowded with enemies and more traditionally dangerous things like lasers and bombs going off all around me.
Those beach balls were already being “aggressively tuned,” according to the devs, which earned a small cheer and many sighs of relief from those in attendance.
When my team and I finally did get to the mode’s first boss, we managed to find the weapons and augments that were best suited to our play and our characters (more elements that are still being tuned by the devs, who mentioned they didn’t just want full teams having a “Drop the Hammer” item that clears out huge waves of smaller minions—which, in retrospect, I believe my team all had on us). But the fight itself was still introducing us to new mechanics and new things to worry about, and it was only the first and easiest level.
Even when we beat the first map, the game lasted about 20 minutes, tops. Swarm is easy to jump in and out of and learn at whatever pace you feel like, not to mention the benefit of getting to play along with friends.
And while I did die an embarrassing amount of times to beach balls, the game has a little addictive quality to it as you imagine what you can do with different weapons, augments, and characters, or if your ultimate had been up just a second sooner. The mode scratched an undeniable itch, and I can’t wait to play more after Swarm hits League’s live servers in July.
