Normally a mid-season patch like this one, Patch 14.14, would just be another drop in the bucket for League of Legends. However, with the introduction of a new PVE game mode for League of Legends, 14.14 is looking to be the biggest patch of 2024. The new game mode Swarm is the League of Legends take on the “Bullet Hell” genre, like popular games like Vampire Survivors and Hades, but with familiar League of Legends characters. Not only is Swarm addictingly fun but it has also been a good opportunity for Riot Games to explore a new game genre and completely knock it out of the park with its success.
Swarm is a fresh take on the bullet hell genre, specifically with its graphics. Due to the insane amounts of things that can be on the screen at once in bullet hells, most of games in this genre tend to have poor graphics to the point where each pixel can be easily seen. Not Swarm though – it has all the graphical quality is that of League of Legends, an amazing looking game. While this is worth mentioning, it is not actually what makes this Swarm fun. It’s fun because player get to run around killing thousands of enemies in a very colorful and interactive way while also playing as characters from their favorite game, League of Legends. On top of this, Swarm is four-person game mode so playing with friends makes it that much more fun.
To break down what is actually going on in Swarm, players are put into an arena where enemies begin to spawn in at an increasing rate. Each enemy has the chance of dropping an orb which constitutes experience, and gaining a certain amount of experience grants a level. Upon leveling, players are given a choice of three augments that will enhance their character’s power; this could be a new weapon, a passive buff like increased damage, or a further enhancement on a weapon/buff that the player already has. Matching certain weapons with certain buffs allows the player the ability to awaken their weapon, making it even more powerful than before. Through this cycle of leveling and gaining augments, players are pitted against even tougher enemies and giant bosses as the difficulty continues to increase as the game goes on. The objective: survive for 15 minutes and defeat the mega boss that spawns after that. Doing this allows new maps and difficulties to be unlocked, as well as grants gold that can be spent out of game to permanently enhance player stats throughout all maps and difficulties.
There are four maps and three difficulties (story, hard, and extreme), and the only way to reach the next difficulty is to beat all four maps on previous difficulty. There are nine playable characters, which include Jinx, Seraphine, Leona, Illaoi, Briar, Yasuo, Riven, Aurora, and Xayah. Most of them are familiar faces but Aurora is the newest champion introduced during this event, and she is also playable in the standard League of Legends: Summoners Rift game mode. They can be unlocked by playing Swarm and completing different objectives set forth in the game.
Historically, League of Legends PVE game modes have been very popular but very rare. Outside of Swarm, Doom Bots and Odyssey have been the only two other PVE game modes ever implemented over LOL’s 14+ year history. Given the popularity of each one of these game modes, hopefully they will be re-implemented at some point or maybe even new PVE game modes on a more regular basis. If you are a League of Legends fan, I would highly recommend trying the new Swarm game mode. It provides new icons, champion shards, achievements, and more so playing translates to permanent reward that will be kept even when the Swarm game mode event is over. See you in the Swarm arena!
