League of Legends launches Showdown, its second experimental game mode

The word "gameplay" sits proudly on top of the PC Gamer style sheet's forbidden words list. It was banished from our collective vocabulary for being a lazy replacement for more meaningful, accurate words. That's a problem, because I need to now write about League of Legends' Showdown - the second in Riot's experimental "Featured Gameplay Modes". You see the problem: less than a paragraph in and I've already written "gameplay" three times. We'll soldier on anyway, but please, for the love of all that's Christmas, nobody tell our production editor.

Showdown lets you take part in 1v1 or 2v2 duels on the one-laned Howling Abyss map. Players can win by getting a kill (or two, in 2v2), waveclearing their way to 100 creep score, or destroying your enemy's turret before they do the same to yours.

The purpose of Featured Gamep... er... match types, is to provide small, experimentally varied rulesets to keep things fresh. Think of them like Left 4 Dead 2's mutators, both in terms of how they vary a standard game type, and in their limited availability. Showdown will run until January 2.

Thanks, PCGamesN .

Phil Savage
Editor-in-Chief

Phil has been writing for PC Gamer for nearly a decade, starting out as a freelance writer covering everything from free games to MMOs. He eventually joined full-time as a news writer, before moving to the magazine to review immersive sims, RPGs and Hitman games. Now he leads PC Gamer's UK team, but still sometimes finds the time to write about his ongoing obsessions with Destiny 2, GTA Online and Apex Legends. When he's not levelling up battle passes, he's checking out the latest tactics game or dipping back into Guild Wars 2. He's largely responsible for the whole Tub Geralt thing, but still isn't sorry.

Latest in MOBA
League of Legends promo image - huge dude in a huge suit of armor holding a huge axe
Riot walks back unpopular League of Legends changes: Hextech Chests are coming back, and the Blue Essence cost for new champions will be cut in half
A triptych of views from Deadlock's improved map, showing a suspension bridge backlit by a setting sun, a triumphal arch with buildings in the background, and a leafy park overlooked by distant skyscrapers.
Deadlock gets a massive map overhaul that shrinks its map from four lanes to three: 'This has a large range of accompanying map-wide changes'
Three monsters holding clubs in Dota 2.
As a lapsed 4,500 hour veteran of Dota 2, the big new Wandering Waters update has lured me back—but despite the changes, the game still feels stuck in its ways
Sahn-Uzal Mordekaiser revealed in silhouette against a white moon and a blood-red sky.
League of Legends is getting a hotly anticipated skin for its lich necromancer Mordekaiser, but fans' joy has been 'obliterated' because it's 'stuck in a $200 fomo gacha store'
Smite 2 art
Hi-Rez will only be giving 'minor updates' to Smite and Paladins now it's laying off around 70 employees, but don't worry, Smite 2 is the 'primary focus of the newly streamlined operations'
LoL summoner art
It's high time League of Legends got full voice chat
Latest in News
Vice President, Games at Netflix Mike Verdu speaks onstage during TechCrunch Disrupt 2022 on October 18, 2022 in San Francisco, California
4 short months after saying 'We'll have to adapt and change', Netflix's AI games VP adapts and changes into a person who isn't working there anymore
A hunter hefts a massive Mega Barrel Bomb in Monster Hunter Wilds.
Monster Hunter Wilds players can't stop blowing themselves to smithereens with its rollable barrel bombs
Astarion, a beautiful vampire spawn in Baldur's Gate 3, looks dubiously at the player character.
'What do you mean real actors?': Astarion's VO, who shared an awards category with Idris Elba after Baldur's Gate 3, remembers the dark ages of mocap
OpenAI logo displayed on a phone screen and ChatGPT website displayed on a laptop screen are seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on December 5, 2022.
If you don't let us scrape copyrighted content, we will lose out to China says OpenAI as it tries to influence US government
Cards swirl in an interdimensional vortex in Balatro's trippy intro sequence.
LocalThunk gave up making Balatro for 3 months but resumed because 'I was bored but the internet was out so I couldn't play Rocket League'
PCGS Logo
The PC Gaming Show returns this June