THE DAY Online entering open beta – First look

While there’s no shortage of MOBAs and brawlers but there is a shortage of third-person MOBAs and brawlers. With Paragon gong offline at the end of the month, there’s now a gap in the market. This brings us to THE DAY Online which is being developed by Reloaded Studios and it’s offering a slightly different take on the MOBA genre with a focus on fast and furious action. I jumped into the game this afternoon to see what’s on offer and to say it’s a bit mental is an understatement.

First of all, there are two game modes, a collect resource game mode where a team has to collect resources and return them to their base. The first team to get their base to level six is on the path to victory, and once level six is reached, the team only has to defend the base for 200 seconds to win. Resources are collected by taking out mobs on this single lane level which means players are fighting to collect the resources as fast as possible. Once a resource mob is taken down, the player has to carry the resources back to their base. While they are doing that they cannot use abilities or weapons and the team needs to protect the player and the collected resources.

The second mode is a more traditional MOBA mode with three lanes set on a map called Downtown with alleyways connecting the three lanes. As the match starts minions spawn and players have to take down enemy turrets and eventually the main Nexus. Meanwhile, there are the usual buff mobs that can be taken out to grant team boosts as the match plays out.

I’ll admit the first couple of games were a whirlwind. This is not your typical MOBA, there’s no mana so you can fire off whatever you want once a skill cooldown hits zero. This means there’s a constant barrage of incoming enemy projectiles, swords, and even flamethrowers. It was a little overwhelming, and even after a couple more games, it was still not that clear what to do. With each death giving a longer respawn penalty you really need to stay alive, and when it’s hard to understand the skills due to a lack of skill explanations, staying alive is not easy.

The characters fill roles such as support, ranged, warriors, and anti-tanks and each character can switch between two weapon modes on the left and right button. For example, a ranged character can use a projectile weapon then switch to either a dagger or huge fists for close range encounters. The skills bar also switches then the weapon modes switch.

The biggest issue with THE DAY Online right now is understanding the characters and their powers. The character selection screen, or pop-up box, is poor giving little explanation on each of the skills. The classes are also split between races and gender which also makes it a little confusing. The UI explains the roles for each hero and what they are capable of countering but not much more. It’s trial and error figuring this out and that involves key bashing in the practice zone inside the lobby area. Still, it’s not really good enough and I’m not sure why developers create such poor UI systems like this. Everything is tiny and void of information which is not ideal for an open beta which will be full of new players.

Currently, there are no real items like you would find in a MOBA which also makes this a weird combination of MOBA-style gameplay and an arena brawler.

THE DAY Online is about to enter open beta testing on Steam (4 April)  and it is worth checking out. It’s rough around the edges, but with some work and better guidance for players, it has the potential to attract an audience that is looking for a slightly more action-packed MOBA experience, even if it is tending to feel more like an arena brawler. It’s not a Paragon substitute if that’s what you’re looking for so keep that in mind.

Thw video below demonstrates the gameplay quite well and it shows the Downtown map in the MOBA mode. The video below that explains the Resource mode.