Dota 2 Auto Chest Design Analysis

I straight up played the new arcade map in dota2 called auto chess (自走棋) for 5+ hours yesterday. It’s super addicting. So here are some of the elements of this game that really got me hooked:

Luck

• players have a limited amount of time to purchase chess pieces (units) from a randomly generated pool
• there’s always a chance to make a huge come back. I had a game where this guy was falling behind, but he somehow got a crazy troll combo and ended up winning the game at the end.

Combo

• 3 of the same chess pieces can be combined into an upgraded version
• racial buff: a certain amount of chess of the same race will have a buff
• class buff: a certain amount of chess of the same class will have a buff

Multiplayer

• extremely competitive, specifically with the addition of ranking system

I think it’s the combination of luck and bit of strategy, makes this game really addicting. It’s almost like a poker game with fancy graphics. It definitely feels like gambling in a way. The UI design and some gameplay mechanics were very similar to GemTD. I did a quick search and found out both of these maps were made by a studio called 巨鸟多多.

Originally published at https://dylanyasen.github.io on January 13, 2019.