Back in May, Crescent Moon Games announced Deadlock, a dual-stick shooter built around the idea of competitive online play, and released a brief teaser video showing off a small portion of the gameplay. It looked promising, and in fact, Crescent Moon isn't acting alone on this release as Invulse Games is responsible for most of the production and�Pocket RPG [$2.99] developer Tasty Poison Games has a hand in some of the artwork as well.

In brief, Deadlock's focus is�online multiplayer for up to 8 players with deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture & hold gameplay types. It will ship with 5 maps to start, with more planned for down the line, and a large assortment of weaponry and equipment which you can unlock and equip on your character as you level up and earn the 30 ranks in the game. For the shy gamers, you'll be able to play a survival mode as well as a mode against computer AI bots if you wish, but really, Deadlock is made for battling it out online.

Today, Josh Presseisen from Crescent Moon has sent us a new hands-on video of Deadlock with a bit of commentary to go with it. Have a look at the video for yourself as the sultry sound of Josh's voice penetrates your ears:

The biggest bit of news that accompanies this hands-on video is that Deadlock will be launching this Thursday the 21st, and it will be launching for free. That's right, for free. The developer's understand that the best way to get a good community going for an online multiplayer game is to set the barrier for entry as low as possible, basically inviting anybody to give Deadlock a try. Now, don't get too excited, as the length of time that Deadlock will be free isn't set in stone. It very well may convert to a paid app sometime after launch, so if you're interested in the game at all it would be best to download as soon as it's available this Thursday.

We've been toying around with preview copies of Deadlock for months now, but we're pretty excited to try out the game when there's actually a decent pool of players online. And based on the comments in our forums, there's plenty of people ready to get their frag on as well. We'll be sure to take a closer look at the final version of Deadlock when it launches later this week.