After playing three or four games of Swarm, League of Legends’ new PvE bullet heaven take on games like Vampire Survivors, I was starting to get the hang of the controls, the characters, and the items I preferred. But I was tired of dying to those damn beach balls.
So I tried League of Legends: Swarm..
Riot Games unleashed the extremely chaotic, extremely fun mode on a large group of media members at an event on Riot’s campus, and the howls of frustration and glee from teams attempting to coordinate against the unstoppable waves of enemies quickly followed. While the mode couldn’t be more different from a standard game of League—WASD movement, constant auto-attacks, trying to track down Yuumi instead of simply banishing her before the game starts—it still manages to retain the elements that allow individual champions to shine while throwing an ungodly amount of enemies at them.
The mode itself comes with a light storyline that ties into the game’s newest Anima Squad skin line. After selecting one of the available Anima Squad champions to battle the invading Primordians across Final City, the waves of enemies grow stronger and stronger until you’ll have to fight some familiar faces as Primordian bosses to complete a level.
That said, this isn’t exactly a mode that takes itself too seriously, and I found myself laughing more often than not when I died. Content with trying out new augments like the UwU Blaster and simply surviving as long as possible, I soon moved on to faster characters that could dish out damage or gain movement buffs, like Jinx and Riven. In a Q&A session after the playtest itself, the Swarm devs revealed that most of them switched to characters they already enjoyed playing in League. So if you’re seeing all the differences in this mode and wondering if your main still feels right, don’t worry.