RELIC ARENA: an autobattler made by unhinged developers
Welcome to the inaugural blog post for Double Edge Games' first standalone title Relic Arena, which is based off of a popular custom game we made in Dota 2 called Ability Arena. Our studio was founded by SUNSfan (yours truly) & Jenkins. We are Dota 2 personalities both known for our creativity, humor, and unabashed fashion sense.
We are an indie company and aside from our modest Kickstarter campaign, we are completely self funded. It has been our dream to create a standalone game and we are lucky enough to have an incredibly talented team around us to help make this a reality.
Relic Arena is a free-to-play historical-fantasy autobattler. We've taken real historical figures and relics and injected them into whatever the hell this universe has become. If you are looking for a history lesson then you have come to the wrong place. We don't take ourselves too seriously and wanted to make sure that was reflected in this passion project.
At the beginning of each game, you select a Leader, which provides some sort of ability that will help shape the way you want to play each game.
Take Joan of Arc as an example. Her power allows you to select a unit and when OTHER allies die, they will each empower you with attack speed and lifesteal for the rest of the round. As the game progresses, you can level your Leaders, which provide unique power spikes. Joan's highest level upgrade will turn the entire board on fire, dealing massive damage the entire round to every single unit except the one selected.
We've taken great care to make sure that each Leader feels unique while ensuring they are also competitively viable. As with Joan, some Leaders have powers that make a selected unit more powerful in some way. Others focus more on economy, giving you the opportunity to be much more efficient than your opponents.
And then there is Harambe, who will fill your shop with bananas.
Similar to other autobattlers, our game is round based. That's where the similarities begin to fade. There is no true economy in our game, since you lose your gold each round (meaning you need to SPEND SPEND SPEND). You are also not purchasing units in the shop.
Instead, you are purchasing relics (abilities) in the shop, which are then placed on hero units that are periodically given to you for free throughout the game. These heroes have 4 slots to equip relics, which can be interchanged and swapped around at any time. The relics even physically show up on the heroes themselves.
Similar to Leaders, relics are one of the main foundations of our game. Each copy of a relic you purchase will make it stronger, with some very crucial power spikes.
Every relic has 3 possible Super upgrades that can be chosen as you level them to 3 and 6 points respectively. And when you level a relic to the maximum 9 points, it will unlock the ultimate Juicy upgrade, unique to each relic. These are intended to have huge impact on the battles and are announced globally to the rest of the players.
As of this write-up, there are over 90 relics in the game, all with 3 Super upgrades and 1 Juicy. The amount of combinations this opens up is staggering.
In the spirit of not taking ourselves too seriously, Relic Arena embraces the same silliness and fun that those who know us have come to expect, with a little bit of shock factor to surprise and entice newcomers.
Goofiness aside, our team is committed to maintaining a few key pillars during our development process:
1) Feel-good power spikes: Players should feel dopamine by unlocking certain combinations or successfully outmaneuvering their opponents. We have pinpointed certain mechanics in the game that this lends well to and have made sure our visual and sound effects are up to par for those impactful moments.
2) High skill cap and competitive tournaments: Our game is built for competitive play. We have a long history of tournament organization and we feel this game is very exciting to watch.
3) Accessible entry for all players - Our biggest focus during the next few months is to make sure we make the onboarding process as seamless as possible for newer players. Games like this can be quite daunting, but once you get past a certain threshold, we know you'll be hooked. It's our job to make sure you get to that point.
We've been in development for 2 years and we can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Closed Alpha: Completed
Closed Beta First Stage: Ongoing
Closed Beta Final Stage: Coming Soon
Open Beta Launch: Q1 2026
We are planning to bring the rest of the Kickstarter folks into the final stage of closed beta soon (that includes Disco and Thank You packs).
We hope to see you soon with more blog posts and updates on the development cycle. Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter and join our growing community on Discord.