April 1, 2018 by Amy Stately
When Valve announced that they were making a new game for the first time in over 5 years, the internet went wild with speculation. But when the first teaser revealed said game would be a card game based on Dota 2, the crowd in attendance at The International 2017 wasn’t exactly thrilled.
Now, GameSpot has released video that gives us our best look yet at gameplay of the upcoming card game… and based on what’s been shown so far, the initial letdown for Artifact seems to be about right. While, to be fair, Gamespot’s reporter certainly doesn’t help seeming to have no experience with card games or Dota.
With Hearthstone being the most popular card game on the market, it’s easy to make comparisons to Blizzard’s Warcraft-themed card-collecting hit. But rather than copying Hearthsthone, Artifact is trying to stand out by integrating unique features from Dota 2 such as three simultaneous boards (similar to the three-lane map in MOBAs) and a buying phase between each round where players can purchase upgrades for their hero cards.
But having multiple lanes isn’t new to card games. Other big studios like Bethesda have already tried something similar and failed to capture even a tiny portion of the Hearthstone audience with games like The Elder Scrolls: Legends and Gwent.
And with Valve making their card game more complex and less visually-appealing than the three games mentioned above, it’s hard to see how in its current state that the Dota 2 developer plans for Artifact to become their next big thing. Then again, Valve doesn’t seem capable of making bad games… so, Artifact will still probably be a huge hit on Steam.
