Ace Force – an upcoming shooter from Tencent Games in which players get to choose various heroes with different abilities, kind of like in Overwatch – is set to launch on both Android and iOS next month on the 13th of August. It’s going to hit the Chinese market first, with a global release hopefully following soon. I suppose Tencent doing what Blizzard wasn’t willing to – porting Overwatch to the mobile platform – was nothing too surprising. Of course, Ace Force is not quite Overwatch Mobile, but it seems like the closest thing to that we’re going to get for now.

A new trailer has also been revealed, courtesy of respected writer Daniel Ahmad aka ZhugeEx, giving us a glimpse at the general gameplay, what the characters’ abilities are like, and how similar Ace Force actually is compared to Overwatch. You can check it out in his Twitter post below:

While the characters and weapons and don’t look like Overwatch’s too much, it’s undeniable that there is a similarity in term of map design. From the overall feel and the building scattered throughout, Tencent isn’t really trying to hide the fact that it’s cribbing ideas from Blizzard’s hit shooter. And that’s totally fine – as far as mobile rip-offs go, we’ve seen many worse ones over the years. This game at least manages to look striking.

The overall vibe is very similar to Overwatch

The guns, while still colorful, are not as cartoony as what we got in Overwatch. In the trailer, we can see some assault rifles, pistols, shotguns, shurikens, and even a flamethrower and a rocket launcher.

Where Ace Force tries to set itself apart from its… inspiration is apparently in its game modes. There are Team Deathmatch, Invasion, King of the Hill, and… Barking Royale. Yes, this game’s attempt to innovate battle royale is to throw dogs into the mix. Quite how or why is anyone’s guess, we’ll just have to wait and see.

There are several game modes and plenty of weapons

As mentioned, Ace Force will be launching in China on August 13th and will probably go global soon after. Since this is a free-to-play release, IAPs are to be expected, though hopefully they’re for cosmetic items only. The game doesn’t look half bad, and considering that Tencent has done a pretty good job with mobile shooters (think of PUBG Mobile or Call of Duty Mobile), we have reasons to expect something cool from this one.