Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Evercore Heroes applies League of Legends’ formula to a cooperative game

Vela Games, an Irish game studio founded by former Riot Games developers in 2018, unveiled its first game at a digital prebrief event attended by Digital Trends. Titled Evercore Heroes, this game modifies themultiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) formula that League of Legends helped popularize into a competitive PvE dungeon-crawling experience. 

While the basics of gameplay and isometric view of Evercore Heroes are very similar to a game like League of Legends, players aren’t directly fighting each other. Instead, four teams of four compete against each other in a cooperative dungeon-crawling experience where players slowly level up their characters, charge the titular Evercore, and eventually win by taking down a large boss. MOBAs, both in terms of gameplay and their community, can be intimidating to get into, so co-founderounder Travis George hopes that the cooperative aspects of Evercore Heroes and other efforts by Vela Games will make this an approachable and friendly game to which platers return.

Recommended Videos

“We all know that games aren’t always known as the friendliest places in the world — and we’re not going to change human behavior on the internet — but what we can do is be really deliberate about the gameplay, the community, and even the technology choices we make to hopefully orient players to have a more positive experience online,” George says. “Hopefully, that keeps them coming back.”

Four heroes travel to an objective in Evercore Heroes.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

So far, Vela Games has revealed eight playable heroes: Shade the assassin, the shield-wielding Fyn, Zari the archer, the creature with a community-voted design named Beko, the melee-focused boxer Blink, fire mage Cynder, tech medic Remy, and short-range healer Lotus. They each have distinct abilities, and most of them look like they could be League of Legends champions or Valorant agents, so Riot Games’ influence can really be felt in the design. Definitely keep an eye on this one if you’re a fan of Riot Games. 

Evercore Heroes is currently in development for PC, and interested players can sign up for a player test that will run from October 13 until October 16.

Tomas Franzese
A former Gaming Staff Writer at Digital Trends, Tomas Franzese now reports on and reviews the latest releases and exciting…
The best weird little guys of 2024’s video games
The main character of Thank Goodness You're Here is hoisted into the air.

We've finally finished 2024 -- and thank God for that. While it may have been a busy year for new video games, I’m ready to never look at one again. All video games are over until further notice. We’ve already posted our best games of 2024 list; what more do you want!? But before we get into 2025, there is one more 2024 gaming reflection we need to do: That's right, it's time for the best weird little guys of 2024.

If you're new here let me break it down for you. This is not a list of the weirdest creatures I've found in video games. This is not a list of horrors beyond your mind's comprehension. This is simply a list of the top 10 characters that fit the criteria for being a "weird little guy" in video games this year. That criteria is a little nebulous. It's mostly a vibes based thing -- one of those "you'll know it when you see it" sort of deals. A weird little guy does not need to be physically little, but can be. It has to catch you off guard in some interesting way. Something unique about it just screams out "I belong here but I also don't." So without further ado, let's get into it.
10. The Unnamed Salesman -- Thank Goodness You're Here

Read more
Project K is an upcoming League of Legends TCG and it looks like fun
Key art for Arcane's Ambessa in League of Legends.

Last week, Riot Games revealed the existence of Project K, its real-world trading card game. The timing is perfect for riding the momentum created by Arcane season 2, the ongoing popularity of League of Legends, and the general TCG zeitgeist. Now, the developers have explained how to actually play the game, and unsurprisingly, it takes elements from all of your favorite TCGs. One big detail to note from the start: This is so much more than Legends of Runeterra.

Riot Games' Dave Guskin shared a post on X detailing all of the rules and regulations. The goal is to capture different battlefield cards, where each captured battlefield earns one point and each turn maintaining control of the battlefield garners another point. The first player to eight points wins, and as many as four people can play in one game.

Read more
The Game Awards finally figured out its formula
game awards 2024 wrap up the changers speech

For the past 10 years, The Game Awards has struggled to perfect its secret formula. Geoff Keighley’s annual gala has always tried to blend a traditional awards show like the Oscars with an E3 press conference. That’s historically led to mixed results. Last year’s show was especially a low point for the experiment, as award recipients were rushed off stage as quickly as possible in order to squeeze in a deluge of exhausting gameplay trailers. As I left Los Angeles’ Peacock Theater last year, I feared that it was all downhill from here.

I walked away from this year’s ceremony singing a very different tune. Keighley delivered what might have been the best stage show he’s organized since he became gaming’s go-to event planner. The show delivered non-truncated speeches, dazzling musical performances, and some genuinely show-stopping game reveals. It was an event constructed to prove that The Game Awards will be here for another 10 years, whether you like it or not.
Don't wrap it up
It was hard to gauge just how successful this year’s ceremony would be heading into it, as the build-up was dotted with pain points. Some were par for the course, like a predictable nominee field that featured puzzling exclusions in categories like Best Mobile Game and Best Sports/Racing Game. Others felt like long-standing problems with the show’s format reaching a boiling point. That could be seen in this year’s Players’ Choice race, the show’s fan-voted category. After a few rounds of elimination-style voting, the final five included three free-to-play gacha titles. That list included Genshin Impact, a game that has a history of incentivizing players to vote by dangling in-game rewards in front of them, something that’s seemingly become standard practice for games like it. It was hard to shake the feeling that the awards part of the show was in some way compromised and that Keighley didn’t see that as much of a concern.

Read more