Hi-Rez announces turn-based strategy battler SMITE Tactics

We hope Hi-Rez’s tease of a new title announcement yesterday didn’t get your hopes up because it’s definitely not the Global Agenda 2 some folks were gunning for. In fact, Hi-Rez has formally announced this evening that its new game is an Unreal Engine 4 game called SMITE Tactics, as trademarked last month.

“SMITE Tactics is a turn-based strategy game set in the same universe as the popular MOBA, so players can expect to see many familiar faces from the Battleground of the Gods. […] SMITE Tactics is a game of strategy where players will carefully choose which minions to deploy across the battlefield and which gods will lead them. Every unit has unique abilities and players will build their armies prior to battle using collectible cards. Players will be able to compete for prestige in 1v1 ranked competitive modes and experience various adventure modes versus AI.”

Testing is slated to begin in 2016; you can already sign up on the official site.

In related news, SMITE lead developer Scott Zier told Reddit yesterday that he was stepping down from his role on the MOBA and “transitioning away from core SMITE design to help Hi-Rez Studios grow across multiple games, to help to share our learning from SMITE to other teams, and to help start some new projects (of which you will hear about one very soon!)” — we assume that’s SMITE Tactics.

“I’m still involved with SMITE at a very high level, and still very active with the game,” Zier wrote. “I’m just no longer in the god pipeline, making day to day gameplay decisions.” SMITE’s new lead dev will be A.J. Walker, better known as HirezAjax.

Check out the SMITE Tactics trailer below, and don’t forget: Yeah, it’s an Atlas Reactor/Hearthstone mashup, but at least it’s not a zombie survival sandbox. Also let’s not forget that MOBAs were originally spawned from specialty maps for real-time strategy titles, and here we are coming ’round full circle.