By Bott Chant Ban, G11
After the big boom a while ago that was Dota Auto Chess, many other game companies have proceeded to create their own versions of the hit Dota 2 mod, with the biggest of them being Dota Underlords, Team Fight Tactics and Battlegrounds. In this article, I’ll be mainly focusing on Dota Underlords, as it’s the game in the ‘auto-battler’ which I have the most time in and know the best about out of all the other games.
Just in case you aren’t an epic gamer, here’s some context!
- Dota 2: a multiplayer online battle arena video game developed and published by Valve. The game is a sequel to Defense of the Ancients, which was a community-created mod for Blizzard Entertainment’s Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and its expansion pack, The Frozen Throne.
- Dota Auto Chess: a strategy video game mod for the video game Dota
- Dota Underlords: an 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.
- Teamfight Tactics: an auto battler developed and published by Riot Games. It was initially released as a game mode for League of Legends in June 2019, and is scheduled to be released as a standalone game for Android and iOS in March 19, 2020, excluding Southeast Asia, which is delayed until Fall 2020.
- PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds: an online multiplayer battle royale game developed and published by PUBG Corporation, a subsidiary of South Korean video game company Bluehole.
In Underlords, Valve brings back the old, familiar characters from Dota 2 and places them in a new setting, the smugglers’ town of Whitespire. In the game, you play as one of four Underlords, Anessix, Hobgen, Jull and Enno, each with their own abilities, strengths and weaknesses. Including these four new characters, the heroes from the original MOBA game return as various units that you can play to help you win the game. Each unit has their own unique abilities and ways to play them, so it’s up to you to maximise their effectiveness with a little strategy.
During gameplay, the main things to be noted are the heroes themselves, and the alliances that the heroes are affiliated to. Each hero has their own stats and abilities, and can be upgraded by having three of a kind of each hero, powering up their stats and abilities. Each hero also has two alliances that they are with, and by playing the hero with other heroes of the same alliance, you can have massive boosts that can benefit your team greatly.
In my opinion, after the twenty something hours I’ve put into it, the game is a good take on a relatively new game genre, being one of the earlier auto-battlers. The graphics are good and flashy, and the characters are well designed from a visual standpoint. The gameplay is solid, with a good mix of strategy and luck which allows for a good, controllable situation that has an element of randomness and difficulty, along with the unexpected chance of amazing and hilarious comebacks.
Bring your thinking caps and lucky rabbit feet, and try out this game! You can find it for free on:
- Steam
- Mobile platforms like Android and IOS.
Have fun and see you on the battlefield!
** No affiliation with nor am sponsored by Valve**
**all definitions of gamer terminology come from wikipedia**