2XKO November 2024 Check-In

Hey everyone! Shaun here, Game Director of 2XKO—our upcoming 2v2 fighting game. Since it’s been a minute since Alpha Lab, and our Jinx sneak peek just dropped hot off the heels of Arcane’s latest season, we figured it was time for a check-in to let you know what we’ve been up to. Here’s a rundown on what we learned from Alpha Lab, what we’re working on now, and when you can play 2X next.

Alpha Lab Highlights

First of all, we wanna say thanks to everyone who participated in Alpha Lab, our first at-home playtest, back in August. We were so stoked to see all the excitement around features like duo play, spectating, and leaderboards. We’ve got a lot more to add, but it felt great to see some of our newer features landing pretty well. 

We were also blown away by the community-organized streams, exhibitions, and tournaments that popped up over the course of the playtest. If you didn’t catch them, here are just a few things that we saw from around the world:

• Brazil — 2XKOMBAT, an online 2XKO tournament with a 95-person bracket (@pulenao)

• France — a 2v2 showmatch featuring local competitors, commentators, and streamers (@MK_RZA)

• Japan — local tournament & casuals setups at the Tokyo Red Bull Gaming Sphere (@BakkyA_suzumu)

• Mexico — La Campechaniza, an in-person invitational with 16 local competitors (@battlergg_)

• United States — 2XHIBITION, an online community-run showcase commentated by Rynge and 2XKO’s own Yohosie (@Dreckerr)

Players were working on so much cool stuff during Alpha Lab, we couldn’t fit it all into one list. We’re thankful to every single person who got their community together for 2X, whether you invited friends to join you for a duo, ran a whole tournament, or picketed in front of Riot HQ to bring back Alpha Lab. We weren’t expecting this level of love and investment from you right away, and we want you to know we don’t take it for granted. Thank you!

What We Learned From Alpha Lab

Alpha Lab was our first chance to see what players like and dislike about the game while we’re still locking down core gameplay. So your participation was not only awesome to see, but really valuable in terms of helping us refine 2X even further. It taught us a lot about which features feel really good, and which ones need more work. We’re excited to use what we learned from all of you to amp up what feels best about playing the game while continuing to knock down some of the barriers preventing folks from having fun.

Before you get your hands on 2X again, we’ll be working on:

1. Creating more opportunities for team play. We’ve heard that cool champion interactions are a highlight, whether you’re playing solo or as a duo. We want to make those moments happen more often.

2. Decreasing downtime. We recognize that losing control of your character for long periods of time, like when getting hit by a combo or while blocking, can feel pretty frustrating. We want to find a balance between allowing players to create powerful and creative offensive options and allowing folks to get back into the action pretty quickly after making a mistake.

3. Improving controls. We’ve heard that it can be hard to find a layout that works with our current inputs, and we want you to be comfortable on any supported controller when playing 2X. We’re still committed to one-button specials, but we're exploring changes to avoid overloading a single button.

That said, we’re also committed to preserving and amplifying the things that you all said felt really good about the game—stuff like big teamwork moments that give the game its Special Sauce™. Those are the things that make up our core vision, and we’re doubling down on them in order to bring that vision to life.

While we’ve gone dark, we've also been making some gameplay tweaks (among other changes) that are still in the early testing stage. There’s no guarantee any of this stuff will make it into our next release, but here’s a sneak peek for now:

When You Can Play the Game Next

You’ll get the chance to tell us what you think of all these changes during our next playtest, which we’re aiming to host in Spring 2025. This playtest will be available in more regions than our first Alpha Lab; and while we’ll definitely wanna know if we improved on what y’all saw this August, we’ll be asking for your feedback on some new features too. (But more on those another time.)

As you might have guessed from her gameplay trailer we posted earlier today, Jinx will also be playable for the first time during this playtest. With this weekend’s release of Arcane’s newest season, we thought now was the perfect time to show off her updated kit and design. 2XKO has evolved so much since we first soft launched Jinx—it’s been cool to watch her evolve along with the game itself, and we’re excited to finally show that off. Whether you’re an FGC vet or just a hardcore Arcane fan, we hope you think she looks sick. Definitely look out for her full reveal closer to when she’s actually playable.

What to Expect Until Then

This is our last check-in before Riot goes on holiday break at the end of this year. In the meantime, the team will be hard at work to bring you a more polished version of the game. You can expect more info on next year’s playtest, new features, and how to participate when we get back in 2025.

In the meantime, be sure to sign up for playtests. If you already signed up for our first Alpha Lab, you’ll automatically receive more info on future playtests once it’s available—no need to sign up again.

That’s it for now, y’all. In the meantime, hit me up with your hopes, dreams, and theories @Unconkable, or talk to the team at @Play2XKO.

Much love,

Shaun Rivera