Valorant Snowball Fight Deathmatch coming in Winter update

Riot Games will be celebrating Valorant’s first holiday season with a limited time mode called Snowball Fight starting on December 15. Here’s everything you’ll need to know before a winter update reigns in the new playlist.

Valorant can be a stressful game. It’s because of this that Riot wants to add a bit of festive cheer to the tactical shooter with a mode that will be just as much about winning as it will be about hitting other people in the face with a (virtual) snowball.

With an incredible year of Valorant in the books, Riot is going to end 2020 with something that anyone can jump into and start having a blast.

“We had the idea of trying to come up with a mode that felt appropriate to celebrate the holidays and the release of Icebox,” Senior Game Designer Bobby Prochnow and Senior Producer Jared Berbach said. “The prototype was an instant hit with the team, and we’ve been working to get it to players.”

Snowball Fight will release soon

Other than Spike Rush, the modes in Valorant can be filled with people playing with a drive to win. While that’s not a bad thing, Riot wants to give the traditional team deathmatch a lighter variant to pass the time.

The holiday twist to TDM will drop in the middle of December on the 15th and will run for two weeks until December 29, giving players plenty of time to try out Riot’s first winter themed LTM for Valorant.

How will Snowball Fight work?

Agents will be equipped with a snowball launcher, and the first team to 50 kills wins. Everyone will have Brimstone’s ‘Killjoy-rigged’ molotov launcher that fires the snowy projectiles.

Respawns will be enabled considering these launchers can shoot an infinite amount of snowballs. The only other weapon allowed are knives and the power-ups that come packaged in ‘gifts’ that spawn on the map.

These gifts amplify anything from your rate of fire to the size of the snowball you shoot, so make sure you’re shooting any you see laying around.

• Read more: Valorant Winterwunderland skin bundle revealed: price, release date

One of the most important things to know will be that snowballs are shot as a projectile (think Brim’s molly or Sova’s darts), so Riot is reminding people to lead their shot to give your snowball a chance to land on an Agent.

Snowball Fight power ups and gameplay

Once a game begins, be on the lookout for portals that spawn just above the ground. These will drop a few presents that contain power ups.

• Read more: Valorant devs reveal over the top Christmas skins coming soon

This makes the Snowball Zone even more chaotic. There will be four different power ups, each slightly transforming how people are going to play in the gamemode.

• Rapid Fire – Fire even faster
• Growball – Grows over time while traveling in the air
• Ricochet – For all those snowball trick shots off the ground and walls
• Skates – Skate around quickly in style. Jump higher!

Agents are only allowed one at a time which will drop once they die. Make sure to ping your team to collect the power ups if you find a few on the ground.

While Snowball Fight won’t last forever, Riot is willing to bring it back depending if players take a liking to it. So make sure to let the developers know if you want more of these modes in the future.