The first gameplay livestream for Lemnis Gate has finished, which gave us a closer look at the turn based first person shooter. The livestream shows of Retrieve XM and Seek and Destroy gamemodes and a first hand view at the gameplay.
Lemnis Gate is a turn based first person shooter where every match takes place inside the same 25 second time loop. So players will be taking turns at being operatives in the time loop and forming unique strategies and counter-plays against one another in an attempt to win the objective.
Frontier Developments
Retrieve XM
Retrieve XM is a game mode akin to “Capture the Flag” in other first person shooters. However, in Lemnis Gate, there are four objectives in the map and the goal is to capture as many of these XM objectives as they can.
Whoever collects the most XM at the end of the final round will be deemed the winner for that half. The score is tallied and the match moves onto the second half. In the second half, the other player goes first.
Seek and Destroy
Seek and Destroy is a game mode that is pretty much self-explanatory: a player needs to defend their objective while the other seeks to destroy it. The attacking player goes first. After the first half, the players swap sides between attacking and defending.
Lemnis Gate Gameplay
At the start of a round, a player will take their turn while the other player will take control of a reconnaissance drone, which allows the player to freely navigate and spectate the map, keeping track of the movements of the enemy player.
Essentially, during these 25 seconds, the player taking their turn is recording a set of actions that will be repeated over and over again in future rounds.
Once the player takes their turn, the spectating player can view the turn repeatedly (imagine using a replay function similar to other games). The spectating player will have a limited amount of time to view the the turn to formulate a plan on what they will do on their turn.
After the spectating player finishes with watching the replay, they can select the operative they will use for this turn. Then, that player makes their move, recording the actions for all subsequent turns.
While the player is taking their turn, the opposing player has their chance to spectate.
In the livestream for the Retrieve XM game mode, we see the Red player grab an objective in the middle of the map, return it to his “gate” (the player’s base in this game, where they need to return the objective), and then toss grenades towards the enemy’s gate.
During Blue team’s turn, they rush to the middle, kill Red’s character, take the objective for themselves and return it to their gate. They then spend the remainder of their turn tossing grenades at places they predict the opponent will pass by or wish to deny them to.
When it’s Red’s turn again, they select an operative that provide shields (think of Zarya’s bubbles from Overwatch), so they give their previous turn a shield, which barely protects them from dying, preventing Blue player from taking the objective and allowing Red’s first turn to continue normally.
In Blue’s next turn, they fire an explosive at the middle objective, which deals enough damage once again to kill Red’s first turn. During this same turn, we see Blue make a mistake an fall off the map, which resets their position back at the gate, while the turn continues as normal.
The game becomes incredibly chaotic by the third round as there are up to 6 operatives running around. There are also instances where just a little bit of damage makes a huge difference, as an operative surviving an attack with little health or just barely dying can make have a huge impact on the entire flow of the game.
Check out the full Lemnis Gate gameplay livestream to the Seek and Destroy game mode in action.
Operatives
Different operatives have different abilities, making them better suited for certain tasks. For instance, Rush has excellent mobility and speed, which is perfect for shutting down an opponent quickly or to grab an objective quickly and score.
In the livestream, which uses an early build of the game, there are 7 operatives to choose from. Players can also select random if they wish to. Furthermore, once a player uses an operative for a round, that operative cannot be used in the later rounds by the same player.
Release
An open beta is scheduled for July, with a full release date of August 3rd, 2021. Pre-ordering the game before the release date will grant a 20% discount and free cosmetics for KARL, one of the operatives.
