Between the end of Arcanethe new Team fighting tactics set, and a new League of Legends The season will begin soon, it has been an important couple of months for the world of Runeterra. And it's getting bigger. On Thursday, Riot announced League is jumping into the real world again, this time with a physical card game set in Runeterra, currently codenamed Project K.
While Riot's announcement video details some of the game's details, Polygon had the opportunity to preview Project K ahead of the announcement and speak with game director Dave Guskin about how the game came about, the process conversion. League in a card game, and when exactly players could actually play Project K.
As the video explains, the game can be played in the traditional 1v1 TCG format, but the team is even more excited about the fact that players can play it in groups of up to four as a free-for-all or, better yet, in teams of two. The game features a recognizable TCG mana system, granting players two Runes per turn, with each unit and spell costing a certain amount of Runes to put into play.
Project K began life last year, making it a relatively quick turnaround by the studio's standards, as one of many projects from Riot's R&D department. After the idea of a physicist League of Legends When the trading card game emerged, Guskin says he and his team developed the game's basic engine just a few months later. From there, Guskin says he began staffing the Project K team from Riot's deep pool of TCG enthusiasts. Guskin particularly mentioned the enthusiasm he found in both Riot's Los Angeles and Shanghai offices.
Photo: Riot Games
“When we started looking for testers both in Shanghai and here, the first thing was internal,” Guskin said. “So I offered Riot to host some learn-to-play sessions, thinking: Oh, 20, 25 people will play it.. Instead, it was like 150 to 200 people saying 'We want to learn,' which is crazy.”
As for the development process itself, everything happened pretty quickly, but still required a few iterations. An early example of this is the game's 2v2 setup, which Guskin attributes to the team wanting to match some of the fun team multiplayer from League. A larger number of players also naturally lends itself to larger gatherings and more real-life social experiences, which Guskin said was another important goal for the team, as Riot has no plans to make a digital version of Project K at this time. moment.
“I feel like if you want to know if something is fun, doing it in a social setting is a good way to find out if people like it or if it's actually just getting in the way of having a good time with their friends. ” Guskin said. “Once we started trying out 1v1 play, we thought: Oh, this is missing some of the magic of multiplayer. And not long after that we thought, Hey, let's try 2 on 2. And that's when we thought, Oh, okay, this is really fun. That's how we want to play.“
However, once they decided to have teams, that created another problem: in other TCGs, such as Magic: The GatheringEach player has health and can be knocked out, but in a team game, that could easily leave one or two players stuck on the sidelines for much of the game. To help fix that issue, the team opted for Project K's Battlefields point system, rather than a player health system. According to Guskin, this also had the added benefit of making the game feel a little more League of Legendsalso.
“One of the things that really matters to us when you play against MOBA champions or TFT is that it works similarly to what you would expect in a different context,” Guskin said. “So when you send three champions to take over a battlefield, it feels like being online or in the jungle. I think there's a lot of room to explore there, especially 2v2, we talked about it being something like duos and, Oh, which two champions do I want to put together?“
While Guskin especially likes the game's 2v2 setup, it can also be played entirely in more traditional 1v1s. In fact, that's how I experienced the game with Guskin in my brief preview. Our game lasted about 20 minutes, which Guskin said was pretty typical for a 1v1, but it still felt like it had distinct stages that should be familiar to most TCG fans. I played with a traditional ramp platform that rotated around the League champion Volibear, and I spent the early game defending as best I could while setting up more powerful combinations of spells and strong cards to play in the late game. Each of the game's decks must be built around a specific champion, but Guskin explained that the team's goal was to make each champion card thematically consistent with the champion, without feeling limited by mimicking the version's gameplay experience. MOBA League.
For example, Guskin gave the example of decks themed around champions like Darius and Viktor, who focus on building armies to defeat their opponents. This is not exactly true in the case of his skills in League of Legendsbut it is thematically consistent with its game characters. Meanwhile, one of my Volibear cards had a more direct link to his abilities, granting him a shield that makes opponents' spells harder to cast against him, such as his E ability in League.
As someone with moderate TCG experience, Project K was pretty easy to pick up. Like Guskin said, yeah Pokémon and Marvel Brooch They are on the simpler end of the TCGs, and yu gi oh either Magic are at the other extreme, the team's goal for Project K was to fall somewhere in the middle. That felt right to me: the mana system is easy to understand and dynamic in the late game, without taking attention away from the more interesting cards, while the champion cards have intuitive, easy-to-understand effects that provide a lot of options. for synergy between them. Of course, it's hard to get much more than a brief impression after a single game, and it's easy and exciting to imagine how adding two more players could complicate the game, based on what I played.
Photo: Riot Games
Project K is scheduled for release in China in early 2025, but when exactly North American players could get their hands on it is a much more complicated question, especially since Riot has yet to find the right publishing partner.
“What we are looking for is a partner that cares as much as we do about providing a great gaming experience to players in the places where they play, which for a physical card game like this is primarily the hobby stores where people will learn the game,” Guskin explained. “So for [Riot] There are certain capabilities we don't have in terms of printing, distribution, sales and organized events. […] So it’s about finding a partner who cares as much as we do about doing this, who is willing to put in the time and energy to do it.”