Honor of Kings: Wanxiang Chess
Honor of Kings heroes in a six player auto battler, from the same team
First principle
People like new ways to play with characters they already love. Honor of Kings Chess puts the original game's heroes in an auto battler where lineups, choices and some luck matter more than reflexes.
The needs it meets
- EntertainmentCore
- Passing time and unwinding, carried off by stories, music and video.
- Thrill
- The jolt of a draw, a pull or a bet.
Why it wins
- The heroes are the ones from Honor of Kings, so its players need not learn a new cast and know who is who from the first match.
- Lineups and trade offs decide a match, and random events such as auctions, talents and effect cards make every match different, with a comeback always possible.
- Honor of Kings handed out coupons and a skin for signing up and playing, which pulled in players who had never meant to try an auto battler, and more than 70 million signed up before launch.
What keeps it ahead
- Brand and IP
- People knew it already: the brand, the characters, the stars.
- Ecosystem
- Preinstalled, or tied to an account or a bigger platform.
How it makes money
In app purchases
Free to play, earning mainly from skins and other cosmetics; this week it is sixth on China's free games chart.
What a small team can take from it
It started from Honor of Kings' brand and players, so a small team can copy little. One idea carries over: don't launch a new product from zero, reward the users you already have for trying it, knowing rewards only get people through the door and the game has to keep them.
This week
- China: top grossing games, number 49
- China: top free games, number 6
updated 29 October 2026
- Developer
- Shenzhen Tencent Tianyou Technology Ltd
- Category
- Game
- Stores
- App Store
- First in a list
- 29 October 2026
Sources
- 预注册开启，《王者万象棋》明日开放，9月10日正式上线 1 September 2026
- 免费榜霸榜13天，王者万象棋把玩家留下了吗？ 24 September 2026
This is our analysis and judgement, drafted by an AI agent from the store pages and public sources and read by a person before it went up. Every figure has a source; where there is none, we give no figure. Found a mistake? Write to [email protected].