Hi D20 Fans!
The biggest update to Abalon yet has officially arrived in v3.0! I am thrilled to announce that our brand-new Multiplayer Beta is now open and completely free for all players. Challenge your friends, take on the community, and experience a whole new dimension of Abalon.
Here's what's currently included in Abalon's multiplayer beta:
- Asynchronous Multiplayer: Play multiple matches simultaneously at your own pace without the needing to be online the same time as your opponents. The server notifies you when it's your turn. Battles can span over several days, allowing you to take as much time as you need to devise the perfect strategy!
- Real-Time Multiplayer: Play with live, online players for fast-paced, high intensity battles with strict turn limits.
- Seamless Real-time to Async Transition: Started a live game with your friends but don't have time to finish? No problem. Every live battle can be resumed asynchronously. Ready to play real-time again? Hit the "Go Live" button and you're back in the fast paced action.
- Ranked 1v1 PvP: Battle players of similar skill asynchronously and climb the leaderboard. The active season leaderboards now contains PvP with its own tiered divisions. Play 5 ranked games to place into your first tier, then compete for the top positions with 100 players of similar skill in your division. Raise your MMR to ascend to the next tier.
- 2v2 Coop Battles: Team up with a friend and battle together against the AI.
- Custom Games: Choose your map, teams (1v1, 2v2, FFA), and game vibe and create a private game room for your friends, joinable via code, or list your game public for anyone to join.
- Automated Matchmaking: Stay in the hunt! With our auto match feature enabled, Abalon will re-queue your same team whenever a ranked search fills or expires. You can have up to 5 searches running at a time.
- Completed Game History: View your battle results, MMR changes, opponents played, and even replay battles by selecting them from your completed games list.
Note: Please keep in mind Abalon's multiplayer is still in Beta, so you may run into a few rough edges while I actively tune and polish the experience. Your patience and feedback mean the world to me. If you have suggestions, please let me know in game (Menu -> Share Feedback), on our Discord, or via our community forums.
Free for all players: You don't need to purchase a copy of Abalon to play multiplayer. In addition to the multiplayer beta being accessible from Abalon and the Abalon demo, you can also play via the free Abalon Arena demo or free to download mobile game. Give it a try and invite your friends to play!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2352400/Abalon_Arena_Multiplayer_Card_Tactics/
Abalon's Next Chapter
Season 6 concludes today with over 40K unique players having participated in our legendary leaderboards! Thank you so much for your ongoing to support and passion for the game.
I am super excited to kick off Season 7 with the public multiplayer beta release. As we enter this next chapter, I'd like to reassure our fans of Abalon's single player experience that I remain as committed as ever to continuing to evolve the single player experience, and I have plans to release a single-player focused DLC later this year. I know that not all players are going to like PvP, but I believe multiplayer is an important part of Abalon's future that will no doubt be integral to the growth of our community and longterm sustainability of the game (including single player). In fact, it may surprise you to learn that Abalon's multiplayer is the reason Abalon's single player exists today...
Abalon has a development history spanning over two decades. It started as a physical board game in May of 2006 that I designed to play with friends on our weekly game night. The goal was to combine what we enjoyed about collectible card and miniature table top games and create an experience that was fun and fast to play. That later became Hero Mages, then Summoners Fate, now called Abalon. Starting in 2016, the first releases of Abalon were actually single-battle games, focused entirely on creating a great battle experience for PvP. Only later did the single player aspects evolve to connect those battles together and create the Abalon you know and love today. But for the past 10 years, I've continued play testing PvP with small groups of players, slowly balancing and improving it overtime. Many of the innovations you see in single player, like the "discard for mana" mechanic, were initially created for PvP and added to the game.
I have a very specific vision and dream for Abalon to be a long-lasting, beloved game that players come back to again and again to connect with others and express their creativity through gameplay. Games are a unique way to know another person: how they think, how they solve problems, how they have fun and share joy. That's what gets me pumped to develop each day. My hope and goal is that the matchmaking system I've designed will, given enough players and enough games played overtime, match each player with worthy opponents where the W:L ratio is roughly 50:50 and that games feel like rewarding daily puzzles. I want players to look forward to logging in and seeing what new surprises their opponents come up with. With async multiplayer, you're not under pressure to perform perfectly in front of an audience; you can take your time, undo your entire turn as many times as you want, and find the best solution to the challenge presented by your opponent on each turn. They do the same, and the output of that interaction will generally be: surprise, awe, recognition of cool tactics you hadn't thought of or seen before, and feeling like wins are really satisfying and earned.
I realize that's a tall order, especially given how a complex game like Abalon creates countless permutations for crazy synergies and mechanics exploits. But I'm committed to this vision and I believe we can get there as a community with your help. If you play a game that seems blatantly unfair or broken, let me know as you're playing with Menu -> Share Feedback so I can find solutions to improve. Join our Discord and chat about your experiences in the #pvp channel. My goal for balancing the game is simple: there should never be a way to win a match on the first turn. There should, ideally, always be a fair chance for you to respond to your opponent's strategy, however powerful. Every strategy should have a counter - no meta decks that always win every game. It's the push and pull, the ability to come back from insurmountable odds that yields the most fun - whether you are on the winning end or the losing end, you should feel satisfied and enjoy the epic outcomes that unfold.
Thanks for being a part of Abalon and our next chapter!
Let's Explore Abalon's Multiplayer
From the new "Abalon Arena" themed multiplayer hub, you can view all your games in progress and take your turns. Each player gets 10 game slots that can be used to play simultaneous games, find matches, or invite players.
You can view all of your completed games to see your wins, losses, opponents and MMR changes. Click on a game to launch a replay of the battle. In the future, I plan to further improve this with new features like the ability to see your opponents' decks and fast forward/rewind.
From New Game, you can choose your team and select Ranked, Custom or Join Game.
The ranked game menu shows your current tier, progress to your next tier, any qualifying matches you need to play to place into a tier, and how many of your current searches and game slots are used.
Custom games can be played asynchronously or real-time. Here's the really cool thing: You can switch simultaneously between these different modes at any time.
The game lobby will let you customize a number of game options so you can play 1v1, 2v2, FFA and cooperative vs bots. You'll also notice the quick-access "Join Code" in the upper right that you can click to grab and share with friends. Abalon's multiplayer will be fully cross-platform across Steam for Abalon/Abalon Arena and on mobile.
Join your choice of real-time or asynchronous games from the server join list or use the Join Code to join a specific public or private game.
The new PvP leaderboard shows each player's win-loss-draw ratio, win/loss streak, last time played, and MMR for the current season. The streak in particular is a great way to see players quickly rising to the top - maybe they discovered a powerful new deck combination? I plan to add a "click to view player stats" option on the leaderboard in the future, similar to our single player adventure leaderboard, so you can view details about each player.
That concludes our exploration of Abalon's multiplayer. I hope you're as excited as I am for this next step in the Abalon journey!
Steam Account Links
Abalon's multiplayer supports cross-play with Steam and mobile platforms. To use cross play, you'll need to register or link an existing Abalon account. Please review our FAQ for expectations regarding what is/is not supported via cross-platform saves.
v3.0.0 Release Notes
- Multiplayer Beta Official public release of Abalon's multiplayer beta. Includes async and real-time battles, ranked PvP, coop 2v2 battles, custom modes, battle replays and more!
- Balance: Created new animal subtype "Critters" and applied this tag to a collection of animals including squirrels, bunnies, bear, wolf, snake, rats, and their corresponding mutant forms.
- Balance: Animal Overrun spell changed from "All animals get +2/+2 and Lunge" to "All critters get +2/+2 and Lunge". (Thanks Jear)
- Localization: Corrected Italian translations on Clik'Clik' and Lilith's summoner detail cards. (Thanks Isc)
Note: I fixed a lot more stuff incrementally along the way (bugs, QoL requests, etc.) and credited original reporters/requesters on each of these mini releases. To view these, check out our patch notes here.
Official Abalon Wiki
Reminder that Abalon now has an official, completely ad-free Wiki hosted directly on our website at: https://d20studios.com/wiki/. We carefully moderate this for accuracy and to prevent bot spamming, but absolutely welcome player input to contribute strategy guides and such. To request access, send Wesley a ping on our official Discord.
Coming Next
Abalon's single player gameplay will be getting some love later this year with a new DLC, the Caves expansion, that will bring a new biome and new bosses to Abalon. I'll also be continuing to improve the game with additional player requests and QoL additions.
Showing Your Support
Many of our players have asked me for a way to help support the continued development of Abalon, so I setup a "Buy Me a Coffee" page where you can make one-time or recurring contributions.
Reviews
At lot of work went into this update! If you have a moment, please leave a Steam review and tell me what you like and where I can keep improving. You can also share feedback in-game via Menu → Share Feedback.
Thank you so much for your thoughtfulness and ongoing support :)
~Ross