Riot Games, the developer and publisher of League of Legends and Teamfight Tactics, has announced that their next game is a competitive, first-person tactical shooter called Valorant. Until now, the game has been known only as Project A, but the company has revealed that it will release later this summer under the title of Valorant.
The game is a 5v5, tactical shooter that centers around multiple different characters that you can play. The game marries together the concept of hero-shooters with abilities, and a CS:GO style economy that dictates the weapons players can access between rounds. All characters can use all weapons, allowing players to make interesting combinations of skills and weapons, depending on what tactics will benefit the team during a match. Matches take place in a best-of-24-rounds format, with buy windows between each round.
According to Riot, the gunplay is the focus of the game. “Throughout Valorant’s development, we wanted to uphold the fundamental values of a competitive tactical shooter: precise shooting, lethal gunplay, and strategic execution,” said the game’s Executive Producer, Anna Donlon. Character abilities have been designed to compliment gunplay and create tactical opportunities and advantages, unlike hero shooters, where the destructive potential is often the aim of ability design.
Riot also seems to be aiming straight for the competitive esports scene, with 128 ticks servers, a “custom-built netcode,” and multiple layers of anti-cheat to ensure the best possible in-game experience for players.
With Valorant, Riot appears to be positioning themselves to try to crack the shooter esports marketing, just like League of Legends has become one of the pillars of the competitive MOBA scene. With their experience growing an esports scene, and marketing competitive gaming, Riot Games could very well make Valorant a big deal in the competitive scene.
