Dota Underlords

Last updated

Dota Underlords
Dota Underlords steam.jpg
Developer(s) Valve
Publisher(s) Valve
Series Dota
Engine Source 2
Platform(s)
ReleaseFebruary 25, 2020
Genre(s) Auto battler
Mode(s) Single-player, multiplayer

Dota Underlords is a 2020 auto battler game developed and published by Valve. The game is based on a popular Dota 2 community-created game mode called Dota Auto Chess , which was released in January 2019. Dota Underlords first released in early access in June 2019 before officially releasing on February 25, 2020, for Android, iOS, macOS, Linux, and Windows. The game is free to play and features cross-platform play.

Contents

Gameplay

Dota Underlords is an auto battler, a chess-inspired competitive strategy game, where players place characters, known as heroes, on an 8x8 grid-shaped battlefield. After a preparation phase, a team's heroes then automatically fight the opposing team without any further direct input from the player. [1] A match features up to eight players online who take turns playing against each other in a one-on-one format, with the winner being the final player standing after eliminating all of the opposing heroes. [2] In addition to the online matchmaking, single-player matches against bots is also featured, as well as a "freestyle" practice mode that puts no limits on hero combinations. [1] [3] Over the course of a match, players earn gold and experience points, which are used to upgrade heroes and other playable units to make them stronger. [2] Players also make use of items, which give stat bonuses to units. [2] The game also features a "duos" mode, allowing two players on separate boards, but sharing health and levels, to perform as a team, with the winning duo having the best combined damage totals by the end. [3]

Development and release

Dota Underlords was developed and published by Valve for Android, iOS, macOS, Linux, and Windows. It is based on Dota Auto Chess , a popular community created game mode within Dota 2 , a game they also developed. [4] [5] [6] Following Dota Auto Chess's release in January 2019, it quickly became a phenomenon, having over seven million players by April 2019, Valve had met with the mod's developers, the Chinese-based Drodo Studio, to discuss directly collaborating on a standalone version. However, the two companies were unable to come to an agreement, with them both stating that it was in their best interest to develop their own separate games, with Dota Underlords being Valve's project. [7] The game was built using Valve's Source 2 game engine, making it the first game using that engine to be released on mobile platforms. [8]

Valve announced Dota Underlords in May 2019, with it releasing in early access as a free-to-play game on June 20, 2019. [9] [10] where it saw over 1.5 million downloads and held a concurrent player count on Steam of over 200,000 within a few days. [11] [12] Features such as a replay system, ranked matchmaking, daily challenges and rewards, and a battle pass were added over time during its early access phase before it officially released on February 25, 2020. [13] [14] It features full cross-platform play between its PC and mobile versions, with players able to freely start games on one and finish it on another. [15]

Reception

Polygon called it a clone of Dota Auto Chess, stating that while they thought Underlords was more appealing to new players, the many similarities to the original mod could make it hard for veterans of the genre to see a reason to play Underlords over it. [17] Critics also compared and contrasted it with Artifact , another Valve-developed Dota spinoff game released around the same time that was seen as unsuccessful, [18] [19] [20] as well as Teamfight Tactics , the League of Legends take on the genre. [1] [21] IGN considered Underlords to be the easiest auto battler to get into as a novice due in part to its user interface. [1]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Valve Corporation</span> American video game company

Valve Corporation, also known as Valve Software, is an American video game developer, publisher, and digital distribution company headquartered in Bellevue, Washington. It is the developer of the software distribution platform Steam and the game franchises Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Portal, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead, and Dota.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steam (service)</span> Video game digital distribution service

Steam is a video game digital distribution service and storefront developed by Valve Corporation. It was launched as a software client in September 2003 to provide game updates automatically for Valve's games, and expanded to distributing third-party titles in late 2005. Steam offers various features, like game server matchmaking with Valve Anti-Cheat measures, social networking, and game streaming services. Steam client's functions include game update automation, cloud storage for game progress, and community features such as direct messaging, in-game overlay functions and a virtual collectable marketplace.

<i>Defense of the Ancients</i> 2003 video game

Defense of the Ancients (DotA) is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) mod for the video game Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos (2002) and its expansion, The Frozen Throne. The objective of the game is for each team to destroy their opponents' Ancient, a heavily guarded structure at the opposing corner of the map. Players use powerful units known as heroes, and are assisted by allied teammates and AI-controlled fighters. As in role-playing games, players level up their heroes and use gold to buy equipment during the game.

<i>Garrys Mod</i> 2006 video game

Garry's Mod is a 2006 sandbox game developed by Facepunch Studios and published by Valve. The base game mode of Garry's Mod has no set objectives and provides the player with a world in which to freely manipulate objects. Other game modes, notably Trouble in Terrorist Town and Prop Hunt, are created by other developers as mods and are installed separately, by means such as the Steam Workshop. Garry's Mod was created by Garry Newman as a mod for Valve's Source game engine and released in December 2004, before being expanded into a standalone release that was published by Valve in November 2006. Ports of the original Windows version for Mac OS X and Linux followed in September 2010 and June 2013, respectively. As of September 2021, Garry's Mod has sold more than 20 million copies. A successor, Sandbox, has been in development since 2015.

<i>League of Legends</i> Multiplayer video game developed by Riot Games

League of Legends (LoL), commonly referred to as League, is a 2009 multiplayer online battle arena video game developed and published by Riot Games. Inspired by Defense of the Ancients, a custom map for Warcraft III, Riot's founders sought to develop a stand-alone game in the same genre. Since its release in October 2009, League has been free-to-play and is monetized through purchasable character customization. The game is available for Microsoft Windows and macOS.

<i>Dota 2</i> 2013 video game

Dota 2 is a 2013 multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) video game by Valve. The game is a sequel to Defense of the Ancients (DotA), a community-created mod for Blizzard Entertainment's Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. Dota 2 is played in matches between two teams of five players, with each team occupying and defending their own separate base on the map. Each of the ten players independently controls a powerful character known as a "hero" that all have unique abilities and differing styles of play. During a match players collect experience points and items for their heroes to defeat the opposing team's heroes in player versus player combat. A team wins by being the first to destroy the other team's "Ancient", a large structure located within their base.

Multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) is a subgenre of strategy video games in which two teams of players compete against each other on a predefined battlefield. Each player controls a single character with a set of distinctive abilities that improve over the course of a game and which contribute to the team's overall strategy. The typical objective is for each team to destroy their opponents' main structure, located at the opposite corner of the battlefield. In some MOBA games, the objective can be defeating every player on the enemy team. Players are assisted by computer-controlled units that periodically spawn in groups and march forward along set paths toward their enemy's base, which is heavily guarded by defensive structures. This type of multiplayer online video games originated as a subgenre of real-time strategy, though MOBA players usually do not construct buildings or units. Moreover, there are examples of MOBA games that are not considered real-time strategy games, such as Smite (2014), and Paragon. The genre is seen as a fusion of real-time strategy, role-playing and action games.

The International (<i>Dota 2</i>) Annual Dota 2 world championship

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Source 2</span> Video game engine

Source 2 is a video game engine developed by Valve. The engine was announced in 2015 as the successor to the original Source engine, with the first game to use it, Dota 2, being ported from Source that same year. Other Valve games, such as Artifact, Dota Underlords, Half-Life: Alyx, and Counter-Strike 2, have been produced with the engine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The International 2017</span> 2017 esports tournament

The International 2017 (TI7) was the seventh iteration of The International, an annual Dota 2 esports world championship tournament. Hosted by Valve, the game's developer, the tournament began with the online qualifier phase in June 2017, and ended after the main event at the KeyArena in Seattle in August. The Grand Finals took place between the European-based Team Liquid and Chinese-based Newbee, with Liquid defeating Newbee 3–0 in a best-of-five series, winning nearly $11 million in prize money.

<i>Artifact</i> (video game) 2018 video game

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">The International 2018</span> 2018 esports tournament

The International 2018 (TI8) was the eighth iteration of The International, an annual Dota 2 world championship esports tournament. Hosted by Valve, the game's developer, TI8 followed a year-long series of tournaments awarding qualifying points, known as the Dota Pro Circuit (DPC), with the top eight ranking teams being directly invited to the tournament. In addition, ten more teams earned invites through qualifiers that were held in June 2018, with the group stage and main event played at the Rogers Arena in Vancouver in August. The best-of-five grand finals took place between OG and PSG.LGD, with OG winning the series 3–2. Their victory was considered a Cinderella and underdog success story, as they had come from the open qualifiers and were not favored to win throughout the competition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Battle pass</span> Type of video game monetization

In the video game industry, a battle pass or rewards track is a type of monetization approach that provides additional content for a game usually through a tiered system, rewarding the player with in-game items for playing the game and completing specific challenges. Inspired by the season pass ticketing system and originating with Dota 2 in 2013, the battle pass model gained more use as an alternative to subscription fees and loot boxes beginning in the late 2010s. Battle passes tend to offer free passes, which are available to all users, and premium passes that require annual or seasonal charges in exchange for enhanced items and cosmetics.

Dota Auto Chess is a strategy video game mod for the video game Dota 2. Developed by Drodo Studio and released in January 2019, the game features teams of automated Dota 2 heroes fighting battles on a chessboard. The mod had over eight million players by May 2019 and its popularity led to the rapid creation of the auto battler genre. Later in 2019, Drodo Studio developed a standalone version known simply as Auto Chess, while Valve, the developer of Dota 2, developed their own standalone version known as Dota Underlords.

Teamfight Tactics (TFT) is an auto battler game developed and published by Riot Games. The game is a spinoff of League of Legends and is based on Dota Auto Chess, where players compete online against seven other opponents by building a team to be the last one standing. The game released as a League of Legends game mode for Windows and macOS in June 2019 and as a standalone game for Android and iOS in March 2020, featuring cross-platform play between them.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Auto battler</span> Video game genre

An auto battler, also known as auto chess, is a subgenre of strategy video games that typically feature chess-like elements where players place characters on a grid-shaped battlefield during a preparation phase, who then fight the opposing team's characters without any further direct input from the player. The genre was popularized by Dota Auto Chess in early 2019 and saw other games in the genre released soon after by more established studios, such as Teamfight Tactics, Dota Underlords, and Hearthstone's Battlegrounds.

Dota is a series of strategy video games. The series began in 2003 with the release of Defense of the Ancients (DotA), a fan-developed multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) mod for the video game Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and its expansion, The Frozen Throne. The original mod features gameplay centered around two teams of up to five players who assume control of individual characters called "heroes", which must coordinate to destroy the enemy's central base structure called an "Ancient", to win the game. Ownership and development of DotA were passed on multiple times since its initial release until Valve hired the mod's lead designer IceFrog and after an ongoing legal dispute with Blizzard Entertainment, the developer of Warcraft III, brokered a deal that allowed for Valve to inherit the trademark to the Dota name.

References

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  2. 1 2 3 Makar, Connor (July 8, 2019). "Dota Underlords guide: Strategies for how to play Dota Underlords, from getting gold to when to buy XP and unit upgrades". Eurogamer.net. Archived from the original on July 9, 2019. Retrieved July 10, 2019.
  3. 1 2 Tan Guan Hao, Dexter (October 22, 2019). "Dota Underlords gets 2 new game modes for The Big Update". Dot Esports. Archived from the original on October 22, 2019. Retrieved October 22, 2019.
  4. ↑ Bolding, Jonathan (January 13, 2019). "A Dota 2 custom mode may be 2019's most popular new game". PC Gamer. Archived from the original on January 22, 2019. Retrieved January 22, 2019.
  5. ↑ Warr, Philippa (February 8, 2019). "Dota Auto Chess: The joyful deck-based Dota 2 game that Artifact isn't". PC Gamer. Archived from the original on February 8, 2019. Retrieved February 9, 2019.
  6. ↑ Sullivan, Lucas (April 12, 2019). "The skyrocketing rise of Auto Chess, a Dota 2 custom map that became one of the year's biggest games". GamesRadar+. Archived from the original on April 12, 2019. Retrieved April 12, 2019.
  7. ↑ Gilliam, Ryan (June 10, 2019). "Auto Chess creators bringing stand-alone game to PC later this year". Polygon. Archived from the original on June 11, 2019. Retrieved June 14, 2019.
  8. ↑ Bailey, Dustin (June 20, 2019). "The Dota Underlords open beta is now live". PCGamesN. Archived from the original on July 10, 2019. Retrieved July 10, 2019.
  9. ↑ Grayson, Nathan (May 20, 2019). "Valve Is Making Its Own Version Of Dota Auto Chess". Kotaku. Archived from the original on May 22, 2019. Retrieved May 21, 2019.
  10. ↑ McWhertor, Michael (June 13, 2019). "Valve's Auto Chess competitor is Dota Underlords". Polygon. Archived from the original on June 13, 2019. Retrieved June 13, 2019.
  11. ↑ Minotti, Mike (June 28, 2019). "Sensor Tower: Dota Underlords sees 1.5 million downloads in first week". VentureBeat. Archived from the original on June 30, 2019. Retrieved July 10, 2019.
  12. ↑ Jones, Ali (June 24, 2019). "Dota Underlords' player count tops 200,000 in its opening weekend". PCGamesN. Archived from the original on July 10, 2019. Retrieved July 10, 2019.
  13. ↑ "Dota Underlords update: what features are coming to Underlords soon?". PCGamesN. Archived from the original on July 10, 2019. Retrieved July 10, 2019.
  14. ↑ O'Connor, Alice (February 25, 2020). "Dota Underlords rises out of early access today". Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Retrieved February 25, 2020.
  15. ↑ Lawler, Richard (June 21, 2019). "Valve's 'Dota Underlords' open beta launches on Android, iOS and PC". Engadget. Archived from the original on June 24, 2019. Retrieved July 10, 2019.
  16. ↑ Gilroy, Joab (September 19, 2021). "Dota Underlords Review". GameSpot . Retrieved September 19, 2021.
  17. ↑ Gillia, Ryan (June 21, 2019). "Dota Underlords feels like a clone of Auto Chess". Polygon. Archived from the original on June 30, 2019. Retrieved July 10, 2019.
  18. ↑ Brown, Fraser (June 21, 2019). "Dota Underlords has more than double Artifact's peak player count". PC Gamer. Archived from the original on June 23, 2019. Retrieved July 10, 2019.
  19. ↑ Lawler, Richard (June 22, 2019). "'Dota Underlords' has more people playing now than 'Artifact' ever did". Engadget. Archived from the original on June 24, 2019. Retrieved July 10, 2019.
  20. ↑ Grayson, Nathan (June 21, 2019). "Valve's New Auto Chess Game Is Already Way More Popular Than Artifact Ever Was". Kotaku. Archived from the original on June 24, 2019. Retrieved July 10, 2019.
  21. ↑ Ye, Josh (July 9, 2019). "Auto battlers started with Dota Auto Chess and now Valve and Riot Games are joining in". Abacus. Archived from the original on July 17, 2019. Retrieved July 17, 2019.
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