Dungeon Defenders 2 was announced today on Trendy Entertainment's blog, along with an invitation to join a closed beta for a new competitive mode.
The game is a sequel to 2011's Dungeon Defenders which was a tower defense RPG and a commercial success for the studio. The sequel is a bit different from its predecessor, namely in its all-new competitive mode which is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) similar to League of Legends.
In a statement on the website, the studio defended their decision to add this kind of mode.
"During the development of Dungeon Defenders we constantly tried different multiplayer modes. Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, you name it. None of them really fit. When planning the sequel, we couldn’t drop the idea that a MOBA in the Dungeon Defenders universe would rock. Maybe it was all the after hour games of League we played in the office. We don’t know. But it fit well into the storyline and achieved a core goal of helping Dungeon Defenders players meet new players, so we went all in."
Trendy promises that Dungeon Defenders 2 will be different from other MOBAs in that it will be more "rpg-esque" with more customization and a town square where players can socialize and exchange items.
More details will be released later, such as how competitive play will cross over into cooperative.
The website also announces that their new game will be free-to-play. Originally, to play Dungeon Defenders, gamers had to pay a one-time fee.
"Two of the main problems we wanted to solve with Dungeon Defenders II were: How do we get more people to play with each other? How do we always have people for new players to play with? Creating 24-player overworlds and adding in a 5v5 competitive mode was our answer to the first problem and free-to-play solved the second."
The game will be released in two parts: one with the competitive mode and one with the familiar cooperative mode of its predecessor. A waiting list for the closed beta is now available on the website.
