With the release of Dota Underlords and a few other Auto-Chess themed games, comes the realisation that Auto-Chess could be the next craze. Battle Royales took over the gaming community by storm, are we going to see a similar dominance with Auto-Chess?
Not only did we have cartoon violence and dancing in Fortnite, but we also had ultra-realism in PUBG. If that wasn’t enough for you, EA got involved with Apex Legends and Call of Duty had Blackout.
Does Auto-Chess have the potential to dominate?
On paper, yes, it does. It has Battle Royale elements woven into its core design. You take one eight other players hoping to be the sole survivor. The length of a game is also reasonably similar to Battle Royales (BR), depending on which BR you are playing.
There is also talk of Auto-Chess having a season type system, something popularised by the BR community. This means they will make changes every couple of months to keep it fresh for the players. New characters added, old ones taken away and various other tweaks.
When you boil it down to basics, there are a lot of similar features that the two game types share. It’s not surprising Auto-Chess (AC) has aligned itself with such a successful business plan. So, that means it is highly probable that AC can take over the gaming community.
Auto-Chess will rule over all?
Well, there are one or two issues that I see stopping AC from dominating the gaming community. The biggest problem by far is the length of one game. If you are going for the win, then a game can last well over half an hour.
This may not sound like a problem at first, because most Battle Royales can last this long. But, the issue is most players who play Blackout or Fortnite are dead and back at the main menu in under five minutes.
Even if you were the worst AC player ever, I don’t believe it’s possible to lose 100 health in five minutes. This, for me anyway, casts a lot of doubt for AC’s success rate.
What can’t Auto-Chess do?
Battle Royales can be played in several ways. One way I used to play a lot was turn-taking with family and friends. This is where we all get a life at Fortnite and we try to get the most kills as possible. We all watch each other go wild, if anyone lands an impressive kill, or if the player doesn’t get a kill, we taunt them. It’s a fun and entertaining way to play the game.
This is not possible in Auto-Chess because you can’t do anything like you can in Battle Royales. You can’t free roam a large space, taunt your enemies or even go for awesome shots/kills. I can’t imagine ever seeing compilations on YouTube for Auto-Chess moments, that just sounds weird.
Auto-Chess is unlikely to dominate
It is easy to sit here and say what AC can’t do. It can’t fold my laundry or do a tax return, but that isn’t the point I am trying to make. Auto-Chess lacks the freedom and creativity that all the Battle Royales flourish on. You don’t have a character or avatar to customise and you don’t have a shop to buy skins.
All these features mentioned are included in every single BR I can think of, which is why they have dominated the industry for the past couple of years. Battle Royales offer a lot more than just the BR itself, they offer you the chance to express yourself. They give you plenty of things to do besides the obvious, which is to win games.
In order for Auto-Chess to do the same, it has to include customisation and shorter game modes for the casual player, otherwise, it will never catch on.
