Minion Masters is a Free-To-Play, real time, multiplayer online battle arena strategy game developed by BetaDwarf and published on May 24th, 2019. It's available on PC as well as XBox.
The player, called "Master", must built a 10 cards-strong deck. Each card summons either a minion, a spell or a building of varying stats, abilities and mana costs. The goal is to use them to destroy the enemy Master Tower.
The game is mostly focused on PvP. Players can battle 1v1 or 2v2. There are also other game modes:
- "Draft" where players must select 10 cards out of a collection of 30 and fight until they are defeated.
- "Chaos" which is a 2v2 but with extra rules that change weekly.
- "Adventure" which is a PvE gamemode where players choose from a selection of Masters and fight through 8 to 9 AI-bosses with teams they build over time as well as Perks that give them additional passive abilities.
The Release Trailer can be seen here.
BetaDwarf also released a number of short stories set in the world of Minion Masters on their YouTube-channel.
Minion Masters contains examples of:
- Action Girl: Numerous Masters and minions are female. Due to the nature of the game, they all fight.
- Adjustable Censorship: Gore is optional.
- Brainwashed: A few minions and spells can force enemies to switch sides temporarily or permanently, such as Hypnotize or Coax the Diplomancer. The Legendary minion Ghost also employs a variation via Demonic Possession.
- Burning with Anger: The Rage buff causes this visually.
- Cain and Abel: Morellia (Cain) and Milloween (Abel)
- Dragons Are Demonic: The Voidborne-Faction, which represents demons, has the most dragons and dragon-related cards. The other dragons are Nyrvir the Fallen who is of the Accursed-Faction, Rimargaal, Scourge of the Summit who is of the Stoutheart-Faction and Xiao Long as well as Jing Long, both of which are Eastern Dragon that belong to the Zen-Chi-faction.
- Elemental Dragon: While most dragons only breath normal fire (if they have a Breath Weapon in the first place), Rimargaal's Breath Weapon is blue fire which while Jing Long is a Lightning dragon which shoots bolts of lightning and releases a short-ranged shockwave upon entering the arena or reappearing after a spell has been used by its Master.
- Flesh and Bombs: The Accursed-Faction's Corpse Explosion, which makes Undying Corpses explode.
- Harmless Freezing: The Frozen-effect freezes minions. Numerous spells from the Stoutheart faction plus the Stoutheart minion Chief Ice Breaker Bolf as well as three minions of the accursed faction, those being Frostfang Familiar, Nezara, the Cold Countess and Frostbearer give the Frozen effect. The spells result in ground minions caught in a certain area to be frozen, some working only on enemy minions while others only work on friendly minions. Frostfang Familiar and Frostbearer freeze minions caught in their freezing aura. Bolf freezes every minion he strikes with his hammer. Lastly, Nezara can perform a Ground Pound which freezes all enemy minions around her. Minions with the Frozen effect take only half damage except from minions with the True Damage-effect. The freezing only lasts a few seconds, after which the enemies defrost and suffer from the Slowed-effect reducing their movement and attack speed.
- Invisibility: Most are Voidborne: The Shadow Welp, the Assassin and the Shadowfork. Further, the Scrat Sniper Styx goes invisible after a short time after shooting. Lastly, two Crystal Elf-minions can go invisible: The Veilstalker and the Mana Chaser.
- The Shadowfork can give invisibility to other Voidborne by killing an enemy minion.
- The Minion Master: Unsurprisingly, it's whole premise of the game.
- Necromancer: Once it is charged up, the tombestone of the Master Mordar instantly respawns the next minion that dies. Also, the minion Rendrath the Deathless causes all non-mythic minions he hits to rise again under his Master's control with half health and damage after a short period of time.
- Our Demons Are Different: While most Voidborne have a high damage output, they are far from the supernatural threat Demons are most commonly potrayed as in most other works.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: Currently, there are three ghost minions in the game: The Ghost which possesses enemy minions turning them to your side, the Haunting Hugger, who also possesses enemies but only damages them until they die, and the Frostfang Familiar, a vampire-ghost that gives the Vampiric-effect to friendly minions as well as a cold aura around them for a short time after giving the Vampiric-effect. There is also the Ghost Turret which, rather than being a ghost itself, has spiteful ghosts as ammunition.
- Our Liches Are Different: Not one but two Masters: The skeleton-sorcerer Mordar and the Lich Queen Morellia.
- Our Vampires Are Different: Currently, there are two vampires in the game: Frostfang Familiar, a vampire-ghost that gives the Vampiric-effect to friendly minions as well as a cold aura around them for a short time after giving the Vampiric-effect, as well as Nezara, the Cold Countess, a vampire, of course with the "Vampiric"-effect, who can do a Ground Pound which freezes enemy minions around her.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: Minions which were given Lycanthropy transform after their health drops to or below 50%, regardless of the time of day in the arena. Other cards also allow you to summon werewolves directly without a transformation. And then, there is Bahra, the Witchwolf.
- Resource Reimbursement: On death, the Crystal Construct refunds one mana.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: Multible characters, both Masters and minions, have royal titles. All fight.
- Series Mascot: Puffs. Most emotes depict them in various ways.
- Sliding Scale of Silliness vs. Seriousness: The Game doesn't take itself too seriously most of the time as seen on a number of descriptions of minions or the occasional funny line by the Masters or the Announcer. Not to mention some of the skins for the Masters.
- Sniper Duel: If both Masters have sniper minions in their decks
- Theory Tunnel Vision: A literal example. A number of minions make their way to the Master Tower ignoring any minion on the way. These include the Voidborne minion Rammer, the Slither minion Living Statue and the Bazooka Scrat.
- Played with with Siege Imperator Ruby. It does shoot at enemy minions in its way to the Master Tower but it doesn't stop or turn back to finish them off if they survive.
- The Undead: The Accursed-Faction consists out of Ghost, Ghouls, Vampires, Skeletons and Werewolfs. Not to mention Morellia's pet, Nyrvir the Fallen. Morellia herself as well as Mordar, the two Masters associated with the Accursed-Faction, are both liches.
- Wizard Duel: Since every Master can use spell cards, the fights between them can be seen as this.
