Valve’s hero shooter Deadlock has a new hero, and he plays chess with his own team. Solomon went live on Friday, October 9, in an update Valve called “Make Your Move.” The day it landed, Deadlock reached a new all-time high of 262,145 concurrent players on Steam, passing Team Fortress 2‘s record peak of 253,997 from 2023.
That is a big number for a game that is still invite-only. Deadlock remains in early development, and new players still get in through friend invites. As TheGamer reported, the surge put it among the five most-played games on Steam at the time.
Valve describes Solomon as a calm, collected player who “approaches the city as if it’s one giant chessboard.” His kit is built around chess pieces:
- Setup Bishop places a bishop that he can slide across the streets, damaging and slowing enemies along its path before it lays down damaging squares on its diagonals.
- Kingside Knight promotes an ally (or Solomon himself) to a knight, adding a barrier and letting them hop to a new spot in an L-shaped move.
- Rook Battery sends a pair of rooks charging forward to damage and immobilize enemies, bouncing off walls.
- Develop Queen, his ultimate, slams a queen down over a wide area, and at higher ranks it can finish off low-health heroes with a “checkmate.”
Instead of a gun, Solomon throws chess pieces at long range. When he reloads, he quickly sets up a fresh board, and the number of pieces left on it matches his ammo. With no footstep sounds and slightly floaty jumps, he is one of the stranger heroes Valve has put in the game.
The timing was planned. In its update notes, Valve said Solomon arrived “just in time for National Chess Day,” which falls on Saturday, October 10, this year. The studio also said it is now halfway through its latest set of new heroes. Players are voting on the rest, and the next one will be revealed on Tuesday at 2 p.m. Pacific.
Solomon is the third of six new heroes in this batch, after the Rat King and Baba. Read RCG’s report on the first of them: Deadlock ships community-voted Rat King hero.
