New Valorant map Summit breaks some core FPS rules, forcing you to "adapt on the fly"

We’ve all been avidly watching Valorant‘s social media account over the past few days, lapping up Sage-related easter eggs in an attempt to piece together what the shooter’s new map will look like. We’ve seen clips of a light show at Tianmen Mountain in Zhangjiajie; a photo collage spelling out the word ‘Summit’ appeared at Valorant Masters London. Now, we’ve got our first look at the next addition to the FPS game’s ever-expanding map roster: Summit, a training ground and meditation center hybrid, nestled amid the stars.

Located high in the mountains of China, Summit is one part meditation facility, one part world-renowned Radiant training ground. Formerly the site of the monastery that Sage studied in before she joined Valorant, it’s a stunning mashup of traditional Asian aesthetics and the brutalist, grungy designs that the game is known for. It really is a feast for the eyes.

On the dev side, however, Game Designer Diego Varona tells me that there was one main focus: “What if a map could change permanently during a round?” Summit has two plant sites and three lanes, which, on paper, sounds like the usual fare. Where it diverges, however, is with closable doors (triggered by shootable switches). These don’t operate like Lotus: when they’re shut, they’re shut, permanently altering the terrain and cutting off once-viable sightlines and retake paths. “You can’t shoot the wall down, you can’t raise it back up,” Varona stresses. “The map is technically changed until the end of the round.”

You may have the perfect Operator setup, then, which gets binned as the walls begin to move. Your climactic Chamber Tour de Force is reduced to ruins, your attack routes cut off. “How do we force players to adapt on the fly? ‘Hey, you have an Op? Your Op’s no good anymore because your angle’s gone – it’s never going to come back.'” Varona says with a cheeky smile. I sense that he’s shut down many an Op play during testing.

This gives Summit a more skirmish-heavy feel. Varona tells me that the map itself is a little smaller than more recent locations like Corrode and Abyss. “We definitely wanted some tight spaces,” he recalls. “I think a lot of our maps are starting to get a lot bigger, which isn’t a bad thing – I think big maps are fine. We just don’t want to do so many of them back-to-back.

“I wanted to be more intentional with close-to-medium range,” he continues. “There are some long-range engagements; when the doors are open, that’s all the long-range engagements on the map. But other than that, when the doors are closed, it’s a lot more medium-to-close range.” He highlights that characters like Omen, Iso, and “Agents who like to skirmish a bit” will be the real winners here, with “fights on this map being very fast.”

Beyond the sightlines, however, Summit also features curved walls in its meditation center area – “it doesn’t make sense to have really sharp edges in a meditation garden, right?” he says. Anyone who plays Valorant, Counter-Strike, or tactical shooters in general, however, is probably quivering: corners are king. In that sense, Summit is unique; it’s breaking a few rules in the same way the likes of Breeze did, but on a larger scale. I ask Varona how the team has designed the walls to ensure they remain competitive, while upholding the general, flowing aesthetic that’s so prominent in Eastern architecture.

“In Valorant, corners are sacred, obviously. Combat corners are sacred, and those have to be 90 degrees. There are times obviously, if you think of Breeze B, where it’s big and circular, we plan around that: ‘okay, we know the cover here is a bit non-traditional because it’s circular: it’s fine, we’ll work around that and our players will get used to that. But when it’s every single corner, it gets a little bit weird because it feels like you can’t peek properly.

“So we want to make sure that the combat corners you’re fighting on are still 90 degrees and still tactical shooter, but everything else is okay. If this is just a normal corner that you would sit in, can we make that curved? How much wiggle room do we have? We found that, when I was putting in the curved corners and curved walls, we actually have a decent amount of leeway to do stuff like that.”

Summit will be added to Valorant’s map pool on Wednesday, June 24, and is available as part of the competitive roster from launch. For the first two weeks, players will lose 50% less RR for every loss on Summit, but will earn the full 100% on a win. There’ll be a dedicated Summit Only queue, too.

Retake – the 3v3, post-Spike plant mode – will drop at the same time, tasking one team with defending while the other attempts to retake. Loadouts are fully randomized, and you’ll constantly be switching sides, keeping you on your toes. Finally, there are the new Blackspyre skins, as well as a fresh Battle Pass.

Having seen all of the hype around Summit at VCT Masters London, I’m really excited to dive in myself – even if those curved walls and permanent structural changes sound like they’re going to test my non-existent mettle. If nothing else, I can happily take in the sights and chill; Summit is gorgeous, after all, so maybe I’ll find some zen amid the chaos.