I’m trying to figure out how Dota Auto Chess works. It’s a new Dota 2 custom game mode created by a team of Chinese developers called Drodo Studio, and it’s taking the Dota 2 scene by storm – Sunday, it had a peak of more than 100,000 concurrent players, making it 20 times as popular as Valve’s own Artifact during that same time.

So how does it work? Despite the name, it’s not much like chess, apart from the fact that it’s played on a board divided into 64 squares. Your goal is to be the last of eight players left alive, and you do that by earning gold, buying pieces, and placing those pieces on your board.

There are layers and layers of complexity baked into Dota Auto Chess. First, the pieces you buy are all Dota 2 heroes, and after each round, you’ll get a random selection of them to pick from. You’ll level up your pieces by buying duplicates, using three level one heroes to create a level two hero, and three level twos to make a level three.