SUNSfan’s Ability Arena Custom Game in Dota 2 is Turning Heads

While Dota 2 is quite popular on its own accord, the game is also well known for having an abundance of custom games over the years. Some of the custom games are created by Valve’s own development team that are included in its yearly Battle Pass such as Diretide, New Bloom and even Aghanim’s Labyrinth. However, other custom games gained their own popularity because of the players that spent their efforts into creating them, such as Dota Auto Chess and more.

However, none of these games were able to replicate the success of Dota Auto Chess until today, when Shannon "SUNSfan" Scotten and his development team created a new custom game called “Ability Arena”.

The success story behind Ability Arena

What is Ability Arena?

Earlier in September, Shannon “SUNSfan” Scotten announced on Twitter that he and his team at Double Edge Studios LLC have been working on a new custom game for the past year, titled “Ability Arena” that was set to release on 21st September.

The custom game mode is a mixture of Dota 2’s very own “Ability Draft” game mode as well as Auto Chess, where players can mix and match abilities together to create overpowered heroes while playing on a Auto Chess map setting.

How does the game mode work?

The game mode works almost the same as Dota Auto Chess however with a few twists, as players had to synergize their heroes abilities well enough to win each round. Furthermore, players will earn gold each round that could be used to level up their heroes as well as their abilities.

The battling system works automatically, meaning that players will have to spend more time on strategizing their abilities during each round as skills are automatically activated. Players can choose one out of three hero bodies at the beginning of the game, as more hero bodies will be given every 3 rounds and are separated into tiers based on their power (S, A, B, C ,D).

Finally, the development team also added a new feature to the game with the addition of Gods. Each God comes with their own unique abilities and synergies to provide an additional boost to players, with more new skills being added as the game progresses.

Ability Arena’s popularity skyrocketed after release

The attention to detail on the game mode was perfectly executed by SUNSfan and his team, as the game’s popularity increased massively as popular Dota 2 content creators such as Baumi and Wehsing "SingSing" Yuen were heavily playing the game mode on stream.

In addition to its popularity, the game mode was extremely popular amongst the general public as Lead UI (User Interface) Designer of the game mode, @bukkadota revealed that the game mode would currently be placed at no.87 of top games by concurrent players on Steam if it was a standalone game.

There is no doubt that the game mode will be more popular as even professional players are starting to get into the game mode during their practice session at bootcamp. For more details on the game itself, you can check out the Ability Arena page on its website.