Knockout City Will Remain Free To New Players, With A Level Limit

Knockout City's Block Party free trial event has ended, but developer Velan Studios and publisher EA have announced that the game will remain free for new players to try. However, once you reach Street Rank 25, Knockout City will prompt you to purchase the full game. The price of the game is currently $20.

Knockout City is a competitive team-based dodgeball game that was released on May 21. The game was free for the first ten days of its existence as part of its Block Party trial event. Knockout City notched 2 million players during that trial, which also included an assortment of in-game items for early adopters. The game is also included in Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, meaning that subscribers can keep playing for free regardless.

Knockout City has earned positive reviews from critics since release. In GameSpot's Knockout City review, our critic Alessandro Barbosa praised the game's novel mechanics and focus on team play, nothing that while that its dodgeball action might appear simple on the surface, it actually has quite a bit of nuance underlying it.

"Knockout City's greatest strengths lie in its simplicity, but also in the ways it remixes traditional multiplayer elements to create something distinct," he wrote. "Its easy-going nature and straightforward mechanics reduce the time it takes to feel invested in each match, but it's really the subtle complexity underneath that keeps the action engaging and compelling over long play sessions. There's certainly room for improvement with the game's rotating match modes and some of its special ball types, but Knockout City nails the fundamentals to create multiplayer fun that will likely hook you for a long time to come."