Super Auto Pets is a game that you'd unlikely have heard of, unless you've been following one of my favorite variety streamers, NorthernLion.
It's a watered-down auto battler, like Hearthstone's Battlegrounds and Team Fight Tactics, but it still manages to be fun. Having simple mechanics allows anyone to jump right into the game and just start playing. And the best part about it is that it's free! (Steam Link)
So, how do I play Super Auto Pets?
Once you start a game, you'll see something like this.
Your goal is to build the strongest team of animals you can find to win 10 games before you lose your 10 lives. You start with 10 gold: each animal and food costs 3 gold to buy, and re-rolling the shop costs 1 gold. You cannot carry over gold in between rounds, so you'd be better off spending all your gold each turn.
Once you've assembled a team, you can end your turn and you'll match with someone at the same turn number.
The battle system is simple - the animals in the middle fight, reducing each other's health by its power. Once an animal is knocked out, the next animal in that player's team is brought forward, and the fight continues. Once all the animals from one team are knocked out, the other team is declared the winner of the round. It's simpler than it sounds - just play a round and try it for yourself!
Each animal comes with its own abilities which can help turn the tide of battle. Their abilities also get stronger when you level them up - by buying more animals of the same kind.
As you progress through a run, you'll unlock stronger animals to buy, encouraging you to rethink your team composition as the turns go by. You'll face monstrous teams as the turns go by, so you'll have to use your noggin to conjure up team compositions that work.
You'll battle until you run out of lives (you lose up to 3 life per loss, depending on which turn you are currently on), or until you win 10 rounds. Simple, isn't it?
Why I think Super Auto Pets is worth playing
The Auto Battler genre started off rather simple, with Dota Auto Chess being the pioneer. However, as newer games came out, like Battlegrounds and TFT, complexity shot up - many complex builds and crazy mechanics were introduced to make the games exciting to play. As complexity grew, it made getting into these games tougher as a newbie - certain builds require fast thinking and clicking to maximize their potential.
On the other hand, Super Auto Pets makes it simple to jump in and watch a couple of emoji animals rough it out in the battlefield. The entire game is asynchronous, meaning you have unlimited time to think during your team-building turns.
The combination of a slower-paced auto battler, together with fun emoji animals, make this game an unlikely hit - even NorthernLion did not expect to play this game for so long. His YouTube and Twitch analytics are also showing great engagement with his audience, proving that Super Auto Pets is also great streaming material. Even larger streamers like Ludwig have played it.
Personally, I have played about 19 hours of it. Even though the game seems to be simple, it still requires a fair bit of strategy to reach the coveted 10 wins. And each run is short, at about 10 - 20 minutes per run, making it the perfect just one more run game.
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