building the same team over and overĪ nostalgia element, as the shared pool of characters may remind of Magic: The Gathering’s “draft mode”, the different feel of each run may remind of D&D, and the sheer difficulty of the gameplay (and the process of learning by losing time and again.) may remind of old school games from the 90’s.Īs a result, the potential audience for Auto Chess is large and may even reach beyond the Card Battlers’ player base (which is large, considering also physical card games). The fun factor here is not just winning, but includes also the dream of creating the perfect team and the thrill of chasing itĪn even playing field, as players are not required to spend anything to compete (e.g., purchasing card packs, like in Hearthstone)Ī replayable experience, as each run provides players different sets of characters to choose from, and winning requires working with what you have vs. Looking at Twitch data, Riot’s Teamfight Tactics (perhaps the strongest of these games) broke into the top 10 of most viewed games in the last 6 months.Ī highly strategic gameplay forcing players to make hard choices, given the limited number of characters to choose from in each round.
Given the rush to release their own version of Auto Chess, these developers must have seen something special in this new genre… and so did the audience, given the very positive initial response.
#Auto chess game Pc#
And just like that, this new concept initially created for PC quickly became a new genre and expanded to mobile, as most of these games are also on mobile (or are going to be soon). Later, in November ’19 Blizzard released “ Battlegrounds” as a game mode within Hearthstone. Based on this initial success, in June/ July ’19 there was literally an explosion of new Auto Chess game releases: “ Dota Underlords” from Valve, “ Teamfight Tactics” from Riot, “ Auto Chess: Origin” from Drodo (standalone version of the original game), and “ Chess Rush”from Tencent.
#Auto chess game mod#
It all started with “ Dota Auto Chess”, developed in January ’19 by Drodo Studio as a mod for Dota 2. Teamfight Tactics is Riot’s take on Auto ChessĪuto Chess is a relatively new phenomenon, as all the Auto Chess games were released in 2019 in the span of a few months. "Auto Chess creators bringing stand-alone game to PC later this year".
#Auto chess game mods#
The first standalone game in the genre was Valve's Dota Underlords, which was followed by other in-game mods such as Teamfight Tactics, released within Riot Games' League of Legends, and Battlegrounds in Blizzard Entertainment's Hearthstone. The popularity of the mod, with it having over eight million players by May 2019, led to the proliferation of the genre after the unique gameplay of "Pokemon Defense" and other similar custom maps of Warcraft III 's heyday had been largely forgotten. However, the codifier of the genre is Dota Auto Chess, a custom game mode for Dota 2, which was released by the group of Chinese developers known as Drodo Studio in January 2019. The roots of the genre can be traced back to "Pokemon Defense", a custom tower defense mode in Warcraft III. If a player loses all their health, they are eliminated from the match. Units may be divided into multiple categories, with combat bonuses awarded for stacking multiple units of the same type. After the battle phase, at the start of each round, players buy units, which can be combined to make stronger versions of the same units.
When one team is completely defeated, with none of that player's units being able to continue fighting, the loser takes a penalty to their hit points, and the game moves on to the next phase.
In combat, both players units are placed on the board and automatically battle each other, typically without player input.
#Auto chess game series#
Once each player has selected some initial units, players are paired off randomly for a series of 1-versus-1 battles. Each player fields a team of units, sometimes called minions, with the player being tasked to assemble the strongest possible team. Dota Auto Chess (2019) was the codifier of the genreĪuto battler games typically feature multiple players competing against each other as individuals, similar to a battle royale.