Spacetime Studios has announced their newest game: Call of Champions - a real-time competitive MOBA that you play in short 5 minute bursts. The game lets you play in 3v3 matches and gives you power-ups, a bunch of abilities for each character, and a five minute max time limit. You'll get to choose from over twenty different Champions, each with their own special abilities, and join up with your friends to form teams and climb the leader boards.
“While the concept of the mobile MOBA is not new, we feel there’s significant room to improve
the competitive experience, catering to the short sessions in which gamers use their mobile
devices,” said Gary Gattis, CEO, Spacetime Studios. “We've distilled the MOBA to its core
components by removing things like item shops, minions, and jungles while adding power-ups, a
five-minute clock, and a full suite of crazy abilities at your fingertips. Add on deep social layers
like friends, teams, and broadcast/spectator modes, and there is nothing like it on mobile.”
You can check out the roster and vote for your favorites by signing up at www.CallofChampions.com.
Call of Champions will be available later this year as a free download.
Meet Ardan, Super Evil Megacorp’s newest hero for their popular MOBA, Vainglory. Ardan is joining the Halcyon Fold as a Protector Tank who uses special energy, called vengeance, to power his special attacks. You can build up vengeance by fighting enemies with normal attacks, or using critical strikes and abilities. Arden can also dash to allies while damaging nearby enemies, perform a leaping attack that deals deals crystal and weapon damage, and create an area that damages enemies and stuns them.
This new addition comes alongside a few new updates including the ability to play your own music while in the game. Super Evil Megacorp has also improved the matchmaking so that experienced players are less likely to match with new players, reduced the network traffic, added auto-correct to chat, and more.
You can check out this big update for Vainglory for free on the App Store.
Vainglory, a MOBA by Super Evil Megacorp, is adding the new character named Skaarfungandr, aka Skaarf. The Halcyon Fold welcomes its newest and cutest flamethrower.
Skaarf excels at dealing long-range and area-of-effect damage, especially during team fights. You can see him in action on Vainglory's Twitch channel right here. You can also find some great "Unsolved Case-Files" about Skaarf on the official site.
I’m going to be straight you with folks. I don’t know much about MOBAs, and I’m certainly no professional. That means I don’t know how well Vainglory, the upcoming multiplayer online battle arena showcased in the most recent Apple keynote, compares to titans like League of Legends or DotA 2 in terms of depth and control. However, in this edition of It Came From Canada - Philippines Edition, what I can say is that it certainly has the ambition to be king of the mobile MOBAs.
Even to someone like me, the specifics of this gigantic genre have become pretty well-known by now. Two teams, in this case with three members each, attempt to destroy their opponents’ home base by making it through lanes full of powerful turrets and endless waves of disposable grunt soldiers. Players choose from a handful of heroes with their own personalities and moves to master - like the sadistic sword wielder Catherine, rambunctious catgirl Koshka, and shambling Monty Python-quoting zombie warrior Krul. Fast melee-focused characters obviously require different strategies compared to slow spellcasters, and forming those plans is where much of the tactical depth comes from.
Fortunately, the game is very accommodating to newcomers. The extensive tutorial goes over basics like what to buy at the shop and why it’s important to not die and give your foes a bonus. It also familiarizes players with the single map and important sites to capture like special monsters that strengthen minions once defeated. It’s a lot to take in, from knowing when to hide in the bushes to the concept of “the jungle,” and that’s before it even gets to character-specific traits. But since this is all the game is, it’s good that there’s a lot to it. Players can also practice at any time and discover how surprisingly nuanced the touch controls are - letting them set waypoints, launch strings of attacks, and tell heroes what spots to avoid.
Vainglory also just looks fantastic thanks to the new “Metal” iOS 8 API. Yeah, the art style still betrays the fact that this entire sub-genre descends from a mod of a Blizzard game, but the details, effects, animations, and smoothness of play actually do resemble a higher-end PC release from a developer of that caliber. Along with giving players new options to explore, unlocking characters from the marketplace also provides something new and pleasant to look at for a match.
Since Vainglory isn’t out in most territories yet, so finding a match was a little difficult. Although once it fully launches soon, that shouldn’t be a problem. Again, I’m not the one who can tell if it will succeed in the highly profitable but contentious MOBA space, but it’s definitely an impressive attempt.
Super Evil Megacorp's "unapologetically core" MOBA designed for touch controls, Vainglory, was shown off at Apple's press conference Tuesday, and today we get another look via a trailer for the game. Featuring veterans from Blizzard and Riot, the game is built in the studio's own E.V.I.L engine and will feature full Metal API support from day one.
Vainglory will begin its worldwide roll-out when it launches for iPad 2 and up, and iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, in South-East Asia sometime this October.
An update has arrived for Gameloft's mobile MOBA Heroes of Order & Chaos, adding three new heroes, a solo league, and Twitch streaming support.
The three new heroes are: Marithus (Fighter), Donovac (Guardian) and Skale (Support). Meanwhile the addition of the Solo League will allow players to climb up an individual leaderboard and claim the rewards that come with it.
Twitch integration will allow players to stream their battles live, with support for camera, microphone, and chat built in. Also in this update, matchmaking has also been improved, balances to characters have been made, and an option to reconnect to matches has been added.
Heroes of Order & Chaos is available on the App Store now and is free to download.
Cliffhanger Games has released a new update, called HAMMER of INCquisition, for Ærena - Clash of Champions. The update adds a ton of new stuff, including skins for champions and ships. Fans will be excited to hear that they can now equip fun new outfits on their champions that have been created by the Ærena community. The game will also now have daily missions and a slew of new main missions to keep you busy.
Cliffhanger Games also revamped the visuals and UI to give the game a sleek new look, and they've changed up the tier system to include subtiers. To top it all off they have introduced Hammer, the Æther-powered combat robot from the INCquisition. To celebrate this massive update, Cliffhanger has reduced all in-game prices.
You can check out all the new content for Ærena - Clash of Champions for free on the App Store.
Based in the Witcher universe, CD PROJEKT RED's The Witcher Battle Arena is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA). In an effort to keep things fair and balanced, the developer has said that the game will have no pay to win elements.
Benjamin Lee, Producer for Mobile Games, CD PROJEKT RED sounds very excited about the project: “We are extremely passionate about games, whether they be for PC, console or mobile devices. The Witcher Battle Arena is our take on the MOBA genre and we are really excited at the prospect of sharing it with the gaming community! We highly value fans of The Witcher, and their opinions have always been paramount in helping us develop a great gaming experience--The Witcher Battle Arena is no exception!”
The Witcher Battle Arena is pretty exciting news for fans of the series, but if you have never played a Witcher game, this app still looks like it will be a quality MOBA. Check out the new trailer below.
A few weeks ago I was led into a room to see something new from Fuero Games and The Witcher developers CD Projekt. Something that involved The Witcher. I had hopes and fears much like you’d expect. Would it be a port? A spin-off? Maybe a town-building sim?
Turns out it was The Witcher Battle Arena - a free-to-play Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) game set in the same universe as the popular titles from consoles and PC. It’s also looking pretty freaking great at the moment, to be honest.
The Witcher Battle Arena has been designed for mobile from the ground up. It uses a fairly straightforward control system that allows you to tap to move to a specific location, drag the camera around, or tap and hold/drag to guide your hero more directly. Tapping on an opponent will attack, and you can tap on different skill buttons to trigger them.
Most of the expected MOBA bits are present and accounted for as well. Each hero starts at level 1 and will gain experience throughout the match, skills may be upgraded with each level, money earned automatically and by fighting rival heroes can be used to purchase better and better hero-specific gear, and so on. About the only major changes to the basic formula are the lack of endlessly spawning minions on either side and smaller arenas that encourage direct player-on-player interaction. In other words everything has been streamlined so that matches are fast and brutal.
I imagine the whole “free” thing might still be making you a tad nervous but the developers are adamant that The Witcher Battle Arena will not be a pay-to-win game. There are no wait timers, no hard currencies, and absolutely everything from new characters to vanity items can be earned simply by playing.
The Witcher Battle Arena doesn’t have a set release date yet, but it will launch with a decent selection of playable characters (eight in total - Eithne of Brokilon, Ioverth, Letho of Gulet, Zoltan Chivay, Saskia of Aedrin, Philippa Eilhart, The Operator, and a Golem). And it’ll be free, of course.
An exciting new online battle arena game called Sigils: Battle for Raios was demoed at GDC a couple of weeks ago, and is on its way to an iOS device near you. The game, which is being developed by Sproing and published by Gameforge, will be free-to-play and feature a variety of game modes including matchmaking, PvP, and PvE. Leaderboards for competing against others will also be available in-game.
So far, 20 combatants have been announced to be available for players to upgrade and level-up at the time of release, but Gameforge says that more will be made available by way of a variety of future updates. The game's battles will be fought in a wide variety of arenas, and game play will be synced in live-time.
Sigils: Battle for Raois is optimized for iOS tablets and is slated for release sometime in 2014.
Foursaken Media's massive online battle arena game, Block Fortress: War, should be available to iOS devices in March. People who have played the prequel, Block Fortress, will find the game quite recognizable in design.
The game itself, in addition to being a MOBA, incorporates block building and strategy elements. There are four different types of characters to choose from, and several items to equip them with. There will also reportedly be a single player mode. The game retains most of the delightful block imagery of the first title.
There isn't any firm release date yet, but Block Fortress: War should be out in March.
Bug Heroes 2 doesn’t simply succeed in reaching the rather high bar Foursaken Media has already set for itself; it breezes past it almost effortlessly.
