A New World of 3-on-3 Battles

By: Matt Smith, Sr. Game Designer

The first King of Fighters game I ever played was The King of Fighters ‘95, all the way back in 1998. I was enchanted by the expansive roster of stylish characters and the potential for customization offered by the 3-vs-3 team gameplay.

Narratively, The King of Fighters has almost always focused on teams of three characters. When we got the chance to create two new Challenger Series decks for The King of Fighters XV, we felt strongly that each deck needed to capture an entire team. With that came an opportunity: could we devise a ruleset that captured the same sort of team experience The King of Fighters pioneered, bringing us closer to KOF’s traditions?

After several design and development sessions, the answer was a clear yes—and the 3v3 Match Mode was born.

You can find the rules for the 3v3 Match Mode here!

New Character Considerations

What is your symbol? Who’s in your lineup? What’s the best order? These are some of the questions you’ll need to answer when building your 3v3 Match Mode deck.

You might prefer a particular character with a particular symbol, but if you can’t find the right teammates on that symbol, you may need to branch out and explore other options.

Traditionally, the weakness of 7-hand-size characters is their low health, which risks the game ending too soon. In 3v3, that risk is diminished—because in the worst-case scenario, if your rival pummels you before you can set up your defenses, you’ll still have more characters ready to pick up the slack.

The weakness of 5-hand-size characters has often been their slow, inconsistent starts—seeing fewer cards and building fewer foundations in the early turns. You can completely bypass this by positioning a 5-hander as your second or third character in the lineup.

New Perspectives on Cards

Our new match mode should have you looking at cards in a fresh way. While cards like Powering the Blightstaff or Blessed Mettle can be tough to keep active against an aggressive rival, you’ll now have more opportunities to restart at max health and bring them back online.

Similarly, hanging out at low health for something like Hange’s Last Stand can be risky—but when losing a character (or even two) doesn’t end the game, you’ll find more chances to take advantage of these kinds of abilities.

The 3v3 Match Mode also introduces exciting new ways to pair different characters’ abilities. How, you might ask? You could start your match with a character like Big Mouth Titan, who excels at building momentum, then transition into someone like Nicholas D. Wolfwood, who can immediately put that momentum to great use.

Or, more abstractly, you could use Armin Arlert, Power of the Colossus to stock your stage with facedown attacks, then pass the baton to Armin Arlert, Scared Strategist to pick them up at opportune moments and mount your offense.

And don’t even get me started on pairing self-mill characters—you’ll find all sorts of cool synergies waiting to be explored in this mode.

A New World of Experiments

Special gameplay modes like this—or PvE—truly embody the spirit of innovation we’re bringing to UniVersus design. We hope you enjoy playing your favorite game in a brand-new way, and we look forward to sharing more such experiments in the future.