Dota Auto Chess

Developed by Drodo Studio and released in January 2019, the game features teams of automated Dota 2 heroes fighting battles on a chessboard.

Players create a team of pieces which are randomly drawn and purchased from a shared pool of over fifty distinct Dota 2 heroes, each with its own statistics, abilities, and persona.

Each synergy has multiple tiers of increasingly powerful buffs based on how many of each race or class are on a player's board.

They can also adjust their team- placing and rearranging pieces within the first four rows of their board, selling them, or moving them to the bench.

As a player gains additional levels over time or by spending gold on experience, more powerful pieces become available to be rolled and purchased.

During battles, players observe their matches and others in order to determine tactical adjustments to positioning, to identify threats, and to scout for conflicting piece or team compositions.

[1] Additionally, the top ten thousand Queen players on the global leaderboard are shown alongside their standing.

In January 2019, players could scan QR codes in the game to pay for candies from a third party store.

[7][8] While drawing inspiration from Mahjong, Dota Auto Chess made changes to accommodate the battle-oriented gameplay.

Valve and Drodo Studio concluded that they could not work together directly, though they agreed that would build separate standalone adaptations of the game and would support one another.

[14][15] On June 1, 2019, Valve updated a monthly paid 'Auto Chess Pass' in the Dota 2 store, with a share of the revenue going to Drodo Studio.

[3] A standalone Auto Chess by Drodo Studio was released on Android on April 18, 2019, on iOS on May 22, 2019, and on Windows via the Epic Games Store on July 19, 2019, and for PlayStation 4 on December 16, 2020.

[25] Dota Auto Chess is often compared favorably with Valve's digital collectible card game, Artifact, with a number of publications stating that despite the two titles being released in close proximity, Dota Auto Chess has proven to be the more enduring game.

But it feels like a perhaps smaller-scale version of Auto Chess, one designed around the small screen both visually and as a game, might be the one to take over the world like previous mods have.

Announced on March 15, 2019, Auto Chess replaced Dota elements and features with its own separate setting.

[20] With Valve's direct technical support, Dota Auto Chess players are capable of migrating accounts to the mobile version to receive rewards.

[29] That same month, Valve's standalone version of the game, Dota Underlords, was released in early access for PC and mobile platforms.