Overwatch Rush is a top-down shooter that’s in early development starring heroes from the main game
Overwatch sentiment is pretty high these days after the shooter’s latest season added five new heroes, reintegrated story, and promised a roadmap of interesting changes for the next year. Right now is about the best time for Blizzard to announce it’s making a new game set in the universe called Overwatch Rush,because people are more on board than they’ve been in a while.
The top-down shooter is still in “early development,” and is being developed by a team at Blizzard separate from Team 4, which focuses on Overwatch. It’s a mobile game with 4v4 battles and heroes who operate at least somewhat similarly to how they do in Overwatch proper. We can see Tracer, Soldier: 76, Reinhardt, Reaper, Mercy, Lucio, and Pharah in the first trailer, and they each seem to each use toolsets that should probably be familiar enough to pick up if you’ve played as them in the main game.
Rush‘s objectives and map design seem similar to those in base Overwatch as well, as we can see teams fighting to claim a designated area and pushing each other off the objective. You can see a few minutes of the game in motion below:
For now, it sounds like Rush is being made for mobile devices only, though it does look like something you’d prefer to play on your phone or tablet anyway, with the main Overwatch game being the more “prestige” experience on PC and consoles. Blizzard says Rush is still in the early days of development, but the company will be sharing more information about the game through Discord updates as it moves forward, and will be conducting an initial testing phase in the Philippines.
Overwatch Rush is the latest in Blizzard’s attempts to enter the mobile market, though its previous efforts have been a bit of a mixed bag. Diablo Immortal was met with a fair bit of backlash when it was first announced, and Warcraft Rumble was discontinued and most of its development team was laid off last year. Hearthstone is easily the company’s breakout mobile hit, so there’s precedent for Rush to potentially succeed, but only time will tell if it catches on.
