FULL AUTO

Meeting the excitable team behind auto-battler spin-off DOTA UNDERLORDS.

- Jon Bolding

Sequestered well away from other game teams at Valve, the 30-odd people making Dota Underlords are having a lot of fun. They’re loud and competitive, playing instruments on breaks from coding and jumping at the chance to down tools and play their game for a while. After a year of growth and work, they’re preparing to release season one of Underlords this month—February 25. I visited the team, talked about their development, and got a look at what’s new in the game’s 1.0 version. What really struck me is that they’re still in love with their game in a way, unlike many other teams I’ve spoken to. Even in a studio with a healthy work environment, the time before release is still fraught and stressful. The Underlords team seems to just want to keep making Underlords.

Dota Underlords is a standalone spinoff from the main game. It’s inspired by a mod, Dota Auto Chess, that has gone on to spawn a whole new genre. A simple hook makes the hero-drafting gameplay of the new auto battles almost like a kind of strategic slot machine, fun both sitting at a desktop and on mobile. They’re colorful games, forcing you to stay on your toes, but still offering downtime between rounds. Brad Muir, coder, and designer on Underlords, feel just that way about it. “I’ll go to the bathroom at round 12 and 13,” he says, to laughter from his teammates. “Whatever, it’s fine, I’m doing fine, I can just skip out on it and it’s OK.”

For a studio that makes notoriously innovative games making a spinoff from Dota 2, what is perhaps the most complex competitive game in the world today, Muir’s attitude came as a surprise. But I shouldn’t have been surprised. There’s a lot that’s unusual about Dota Underlords.