Riot Games have finally revealed its first major non-League of Legends game: Valorant. The company’s new game is a major departure from its MOBA past and doesn’t even draw on similar strategy games like Legends of Runeterra or Teamfight Tactics.
Valorant will be a free-to-play game pitting two teams of five players against each other. Each match, one team will be on the defensive, while the other attacks. Each match has 25 total rounds; the first team to win 13 rounds wins the match. At the start of each match, players pick characters called Agents. Agents have special abilities like dashing quickly, creating pools of smoke, building walls, or even calling down airstrikes.
“In Valorant, players choose from a diverse cast of hypernatural, battle-ready agents from real-world cultures and locations, each bringing a set of unique abilities that complement gunplay through tactical information and strategic support, changing the way players approach a situation. Abilities are designed to create tactical opportunities for players to take the right shot,”Riot Games explains.
The game’s closest comparison is Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, with a little bit of Rainbow Six Siege mixed in.
Riot Games is best known for the MOBA League of Legends, which launched back in 2009 and remains a hit today. The developer has begun to expand its reach to other genres. Along with this shooter, it launched the digital card game Runeterra earlier this into beta. Riot is also working on a fighting game. Runeterra will be going after a team-based shooter market populated by the likes of Valve’s Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Blizzard’s Overwatch. Those are both premium games, however. Hi-Rez’s Paladins would be a free-to-play example.
