Knockout City

As you might have heard, Velan Studios (the team behind Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit) is currently hosting a beta weekend for its new team-based dodgeball-style game, Knockout City. You can download it right now from the Switch eShop.

Ahead of the beta going live this week, we got some exclusive details from Velan about the importance of delivering the "full-featured" experience across all platforms, including the Switch.

"Velan Studios’ general design philosophy for Knockout City is to have feature parity across all platforms. It was important to us that we deliver the same, great, full-featured experience to all platforms, including (and especially!) Nintendo Switch."

To keep Nintendo gamers competitive, Knockout City on the Switch features two different graphical settings, which can be accessed within the game's settings menu. There is a "quality" mode and a "performance" mode that's more suited to competitive play. Here's the resolution and framerate breakdown of each one:

Quality Mode: This is the default setting with higher graphical fidelity and includes extra graphic features like sunshafts, bloom, and increased shadow cascades. Docked: 1080p, 30fps, Handheld: 720p, 30fps

Performance Mode: This mode features lower graphical fidelity to maintain a high frame rate. Performance Mode requires a stable and persistent high-speed internet connection. Docked: 810p, 60fps, Handheld: 540p, 60fps

"A solid internet connection could mean the difference between taking out your opponent and getting smacked in the face with a ball. Performance Mode requires a high quality, stable internet connection. We recommend 50-80ms of latency to your nearest server, but lower is always better. If you have a Wired Internet LAN adapter, we recommend using that for best performance."

Apart from two different modes, and "solid netcode", Knockout City on the Switch also features Voice Chat, which Velan highly recommends taking advantage of for strategic play. A Pro Controller is also advisable, for "high-skill play", precision aiming and overall comfort.

One other nifty feature is cross-progression - allowing you to take your progression (including level, cosmetics and contract progress) from the Switch version of Knockout City to PC/PS4/XB1 or vice versa.

Have you tried out this open-beta yet? What are your thoughts so far? Leave a comment down below.