In the ever-growing MOBA landscape, we are starting to see all sorts of variations on the tried and true genre. We are seeing new MOBAs based on popular IPs, and MOBAs that offer new and interesting mechanical shifts on the tried-and-true formula. We’ve seen popular MOBAs make their way to consoles, and now we have Vainglory from Super Evil Megacorp, a game built from the ground-up to harness the power of the iPhone and iPad to bring a feature-full MOBA to tablets and smartphones!
Vainglory is, at its core, a traditional MOBA. Two teams of three players battle to destroy the enemy’s base – in Vainglory‘s case, a massive crystal housed deep within the enemy fortress. Each team must select from their pool of heroes, and not only must they choose based on their team chemistry, but also to counter the possible team that the opposition sends after them. There are, at present, nine heroes to choose from, but that number is almost guaranteed to expand moving forward.
What sets Vainglory apart from its contemporaries is its platform. Being available on iOS, the game has been built with touch input in mind. Because of the focus on mobile and tablet platforms, ensuring brevity has also been a key factor in the game’s design. After all, with cell phones and tablets you are dealing with a finine power supply. This is why Vainglory aims at average matches of around 20 minutes, as opposed to the 35-45 minute matches in most other MOBAs. This is due, in part, to the smaller teams, but also because of the way the game encourages and instigates team fights.
Vainglory is poised to change the landscape of how players experience MOBAs once it launches on iOS sometime in October. If you’re a MOBA fan, or just looking to for an experience on your phone that you can’t replicate anywhere else, head over to our Vainglory wiki to read up on the different Heroes and abilities.