About

Auto Chess or Auto Battler is a genre of strategy video games loosely based on the real-life chess originating from a popular modification for Dota 2. Following the success of the original modification, multiple standalone games in the genre were announced and produced, including Dota Underlords by Valve and Teamfight Tactics by Riot Games.

Gameplay

In the auto chess games, players play against each other on chessboard-like fields. To win, players must purchase units (pieces) with in-game gold, upgrade them, equip them with items and fine-tune their rosters based on the available synergies.

Each match is divided into a number of rounds, with player teams being pitched against either each other or neutral opponents ("creeps"), with the fights completing automatically. The owner of the losing team receives damage based on the severity of their loss. Players whose health drops to zero are eliminated until only one player remains.

History

On January 4th, 2019, Dota 2 custom game mode Dota Auto Chess (DAC) was released by Drodo Studio.^[1]

In the next months, the game mod gained significant popularity. In January and February 2019, Dota 2 gained over 125,000 daily online players.^[2] On February 16th, 2019, Gameinformer reported that the game mode was the fourth most popular game on Steam with over four million players.^[3] On March 9, 2019, Dota 2 peaked at over 1 million online players for the first time since February 2017.^[2]

On February 20th, 2019, VPEsports reported that Valve was considering the acquisition of Dota Auto Chess and making it an official Valve title.^[4] However, the agreement was not reached.

Auto Chess Mobile

On March 14th, 2019, Venture Beat reported that a standalone "Dota Auto Chess" app was being developed by Drodo Studio in partnership with Dragonest,^[5] with reservations for Android and iOS open online.^[6]

On April 16th, the beta version of the game was made available in China.^[8] On May 17th, 2019, English open beta of the game started.^[9] The basics of the game were kept very similar to that of the original Dota 2 mod, with main differences being the new engine, art and user interface.

Teamfight Tactics

On June 10th, 2019, League of Legends developer Riot Games announced a new auto chess game mode Teamfight Tactics based on the champions already available in the main League of Legends.^[10] Unlike the original Dota 2 game mode, the playing field in the game consists of hexagons instead of squares. On June 18th, 2019, the public beta of the game mode started, with Teamfight Tactis set to become available on June 25th, 2019.^[11]

Dota Underlords

On June 13th, Dota 2 developer Valve started limited public beta of its standalone auto chess installment Dota Underlords, available to PC players.^[12] On June 20th, the game entered open beta on PC, iOS and Android.^[13] The game featured minimal differences from the original Dota Auto Chess game mode, with the majority of pieces and abilities reused.

Fandom

In the months following the release of the game mode, multiple memes related to the custom game appeared online, with numerous notable examples posted to /r/AutoChess subreddit.^[7]

Search Interest

External References