When it was first revealed that Valve had filed a trademark for something called Dota Underlords, there was a lot of speculation. Some of those in the community even agreed that whatever it could be, it would not be Valve's take on the popular auto chess version of Dota 2. We here at Player.One predicted it would be related to mobile gaming. As it turns, a lot of people were wrong as Valve confirmed that Dota Underlords is indeed their own version of Auto Chess.
This is the third auto battler to hit the market after the original Auto Chess and Teamfight Tactics from League of Legends. Similar to the other games in this new genre, eight players fight a battle of wits by "building, combining, and leveling up a crew in a battle of dominance for the city of White Spire."
According to Valve, it had been running a Friends and Family Beta for the last few weeks. However, beginning Thursday, June 13, Valve said they are expanding access and now all Dota 2 Battle Pass owners can try out the new game. Battle Pass owners can go to the Dota 2 dashboard and find the link to add the new game to their own Steam library.
As the preparations are being finalized for the Open Beta, Valve intends to stress test its servers. The stress testing is planned to be done for about a week before the transition to Open Beta.
Under the preview version, players are able to:
- Play online against seven other players.
- Practice offline against a lineup of advanced bots (from easy to hardcore difficulty).
- Party up and play together against bots or other players.
Once Open Beta begins, Dota Underlords can be accessed by everyone for free on Steam, iOS, and Android. This is means that there is indeed a mobile version in development, so our guess was somewhat close.
Going back to the Open Beta, the first set of new features to be activated include:
- Ranked matchmaking.
- Cross-play across all devices.
- Rank and progression shared across all devices.
Since the game is still in active development, it means that the Preview and Open Beta needs the assistance of all players in order to come out with the best game by the time Season One is launched.
