Late yesterday afternoon the news broke that Valve had announced a new game. I was eating dinner at the time, and I immediately put down my fork and starting frantically poking at my phone to see the good news. “This is the headline we’ve been waiting for,” thought I. “This could be the next Half-Life.” It was not. Valve announced a new DOTA card game called Artifact. Check out the teaser trailer above.
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Needless to say, the internet was completely torn in two; divided down the middle with DOTA players on one side raising their hands in excitement, and literally everyone else in the world on the other side kicking the dirt and cursing Valve. We suppose it makes sense, but dang if we weren’t excited for something more… substantial.
But that’s enough of my whining! For those of you who love CCGs and especially for those of you who love DOTA, this is the Hearthstone you’ve been waiting for. We don’t know much about Artifact at this point, only that it’s a digital card game coming some time in 2018. On the official Twitter page there has been no shortage of fans asking for platform details, but we haven’t heard back from Valve yet. I think it’s safe to assume that Artifact will find its way to Steam, but whether we’ll end up playing this on mobile platforms or anything else is unknown at this time.
Sean Plott revealed the game during the second day of TI7, and he didn’t divulge much to those present. We heard something about three boards, and a selection of some of the more well-known characters from DOTA 2. You’ll also be “building barracks, creeps, and lanes” somehow, though we can’t imagine how that will play into a player’s overall strategy. Valve will have to do something pretty creative if it intends for Artifact to successfully break into a genre almost completely dominated by Blizzard’s Hearthstone, and honest we can’t wait to see how it does that. Stay tuned for more details.
