You can play unreleased Deadlock heroes in Sandbox with these console commands

If you’re one of the many players eagerly awaiting the next hero drop in Deadlock, you might be excited to hear you can actually play unreleased heroes ahead of time using console commands. This is only available in the Sandbox mode, and they’re not all available yet.

But you can still try them out even if you’re stuck in the T pose. Valve games built on the Source 1 and 2 engines are known for how much players can tweak them using the extensive console and its many commands. To play unreleased Deadlock heroes early, you’ll need to use the “selecthero” command in the console (opened with F7) and then type in the hero you’d like to try out (type in dump_hero_names to see a full list of available heroes). For example, if you want to try the strange Slork, type in “selecthero hero_slork” and give him a whirl in the Sandbox map.

For ease of use, here are all the available unreleased hero names:

• hero_kali
• hero_nano
• hero_astro
• hero_gunslinger
• hero_yakuza
• hero_tokamak
• hero_wrecker
• hero_rutger
• hero_synth
• hero_thumper
• hero_mirage
• hero_slork
• hero_cadence
• hero_bomber

Not all of these are very far in development and won’t be a pleasant experience (they’re stuck T posing and have no animations or temporary effects), but they’re still available for you to try out and see what they’ll be about once they’re out. Some are actually quite fleshed out, especially Astro, Nano, Wrecker, and Mirage (he has portrait and fleshed-out skills but appears as an ERROR temp model in our testing).

Valve is constantly working on developing new heroes, adding them to Deadlock, and reworking existing ones to make them more appropriate. Recently, one of the game’s lead devs confirmed reworks would be coming to most heroes at least to some degree, so the game’s roster, especially the unreleased ones, might look quite different when the game comes out.