It feels like Duelyst spent several years trying to find a business model that worked, before it finally shut down for good back in 2020. Well now the whole thing - code and art - is open source and available for use in others projects, royalty-free.
]]>Duelyst 2! It's a thing! It's a thing with a free public beta you can play right now, and it's a good enough thing to be worth the risk of your boss coming over to ask why your screen is full of gorgeous battling wizards and creatures rather than spreadsheets.
Duelyst the first boasted a dead clever combination of card-battling and physical manoeuvring, a bit like Marvel's Midnight Suns but better and multiplayer. I was sad when it died. This is by a different team of developers, and it's more of a revival with a few tweaks than a true sequel. Who cares, I can play Duelyst again.
]]>Card-shuffling strategy Duelyst is powering down next month. Such is the way of free online games, sadly. Bidding farewell to Duelyst in an announcement on Friday, developers Counterplay Games are "saddened to announce" that all servers will officially close on February 27th at 11pm (3pm PST). If you've ever wanted to give it a shot - and from the reception it got in the RPS treehouse, you really should - that's four weeks to give Duelyst one last bash.
]]>Collectible card games have been around for decades, but they've really been running hot ever since Blizzard unleashed Hearthstone four years ago. Since then, we've seen Shadowverse, Gwent, The Elder Scrolls: Legends, Duelyst, Faeria - there are a lot of these things, if you haven't heard. They all put their own spin on rectangles with numbers on 'em, but they also universally take cues from Hearthstone and, just as often, each other, and as a result they regularly run into similar problems, the biggest two being how to balance a competitive system and how to price card packs fairly.
Artifact, Valve's upcoming Dota-inspired card game, is definitely using some pages from the same books, but it's also doing enough things differently that it has the potential to solve a lot of those problems.
]]>Welcome to Spawn Point, where we take something wonderful from the world of gaming and explain what it is, why it’s worth your time and how to get involved. This time: collectible card games (or at least, the videogame kind).
Hello, I would like to collect some cards please. Of course, friend. We have a wide variety of fantasy themed cards, ranging from hostile dragon to raving ghoul to –
Hang on, what are these numbers? Oh, ignore those, they’re nothing to worry about. Look at this wizard!
]]>Both of our resident deckheads are elsewhere this week, so it falls to me as a recovering shuffleholic to nervously peek at news of the next Duelyst expansion. Over 100 new cards are coming to the free-to-play CCG in Trials Of Mythron, its sixth expansion, with new mechanics and a new one-per-deck rarity. I'm told Duelyst is good, though I nod along enthusiastically with a look of terror and my nails drawing blood from the palm of my hand-holding hand, so this is good. Here, check out the pretty sprites of the expansion's new units:
]]>A bug with Hearthstone's ranked play recently brought the mode crashing to its CC-knees, but it's now back on its feet again thanks to a hotfix from Blizzard. When the new competitive season rolled round on March 1st, something awry with the tweaks to the progression system meant that players rank stopped updating altogether. Blizzard disabled the mode while they worked on the problem, and they didn't get everything back up and running until 12pm today.
So, the joys of the Hearthstone ladder are once again available to all. Before you log back in though, why not keep reading for a minute or two more. I'm not saying you should stop playing Hearthstone. I'm just saying your life might be better if you tried one of these superior CCGs instead.
]]>Android: Netrunner is a two-player card game set in a cyberpunk world where a hacker and a corporation angrily click their mouse buttons at each other until one of the following things happens:
1. The corporation researches a bunch of terrifying technology.
2. The hacker steals all the files the CEO accidentally left on his desktop.
3. The corporation runs out of ideas, and just sits there going: “Uhhh.”
4. The hacker dies from too much internet.
We have a much better explanation below. For now, let's say it’s a good game. The downside, however, is that it’s not a PC game. You can only play it in meatspace, with real, germ-spreading cards bought from fleshy human vendors of physical antiquities. At least, that’s how it seems. Turns out there’s an unofficial website called Jinteki.net that lets you play online for free. But is it worth the click? Matt and Brendan take a look.
]]>There's nothing quite like Duelyst. Ok, that's a lie - Hearthstone is a bit like Duelyst, but it's nowhere near as good. At the heart of Duelyst is the grid that battles take place on, which means every move requires several more layers of thought. I gave it a glowing review last year, and decided to jump back in this morning for a couple of games with the seasonal Frostfire mode.
]]>There are some good, silly names in the latest expansion for monster-battling card game Duelyst. A goth called Maehv Skinsolder. A mutliarmed sorceress called Shidai Stormblossom. One guy is called "Brome", which is the most US high school footballer name imaginable. They're all new generals, part of the 100-card roster of Immortal Vanguard, which came out a couple of days ago. I haven't summoned my precious winged rat babies in a while, so I can't say what this adds to the shifting tactics of the game. But I can say that "Ragnora the Relentless" sounds like a good name for a superhero dinner lady.
]]>I’ll always remember Duelyst for its spectacularly dumb monster fights. Following a recent takeover from Bandai Namco, the collectible card game is continuing on, eggs-a-poppin’ and minions-a-marching. Next month there’ll be an expansion of 100 cards, including six new generals with which to lead your beasts into battle, one new leader for each faction. One of them is called "Ragnora the Relentless" which is a perfect name for any small pet.
]]>The makers of card game monster-battler Duelyst [official site] recently got into bed with publishers Bandai Namco. But now the problems of this transfer of power are rearing their heads and, oh no, they UGLY. The most noticeable issue is that some players from Russia and other non-US countries have found themselves locked out of the game. A game they’ve spent a huge amount of time and money on. And it appears this is part of a larger shutting down operation.
]]>94 new cards have arrived in fine free-to-play card battler Duelyst [official site] with the launch of its latest expansion, Unearthed Prophecy. This is the first big update since developers Counterplay Games cosied up to Bandai Namco. Let's wish their partnership remains this fruitful.
Our boy Brendan's indifference to digital cards is such that he once tore up a digital card gift for $5,000 on loofahs2u.com just to prove the point, but I know even he has been won over Duelyst (and got himself into some really daft situations). If you don't dig Hearthstones and all that, maybe give this a crack.
]]>My favourite take on monster chess and free-to-play collectible card game Duelyst [official site] is “partnering” with publisher Bandai Namco, say developers Counterplay Games. The deal won’t change the design team, say Counterplay, they’re still in charge of inventing horrible beasts and animating them with neato pixel art, but the publisher will now be in charge of managing the servers, advertising and customer service. This could be a good sign, or it could be a bad sign, or it could be a sign that reads: “I am not particularly significant”.
]]>Whoops, I missed this when it happened last week. Duelyst [official site], the collectible card game full of dumb possibilities, has been updated to allow for even more dumb possibilities. Wonderful! Usually, you can only build your decks of minions and monsters from a single faction (and some "neutral" cards if you like). But a new "Rift" mode is letting player draft cards from all factions into bulbous, weird decks, then fight it out with each other.
]]>We’re currently spoiled for choice when it comes to collectible card games. If you’re not into the traditional nature of the efficient Hearthstone, you might dip your toes into the monster chess of Duelyst, and if you don’t fancy that maybe you’ll swan off with the Gods of Smite Tactics (although I wouldn’t currently recommend it). Into this arena comes Faeria [official site] a board-game-card-game hybrid that moves slowly and methodically but soon reveals itself to be quietly clever.
]]>It’s card game madness this week. Not only has Faeria announced plans for a co-op campaign but the third expansion for fellow minion battler Duelyst [official site] also came out yesterday. It’s called Ancient Bonds and, like the BBC’s Bruce Parry, it is all about dem tribes.
]]>Every Monday Brendan prays to the gods of early access for favour, power and a winning hand. This week, the collectible card game battler Smite Tactics [official site]
Being a fan of Duelyst’s card-based lunacy, I was more than happy to dip my toes into Smite Tactics at Pip’s suggestion. It’s a spin-off CCG from the makers of the same-named MOBA, using their collected gods and mythical figureheads to get you collecting cards instead of pushing mid. Sadly, it’s as skeletal as an argonaut’s worst nightmare, in dire need of some fleshing out.
]]>I like Duelyst [official site], which is a surprise. The world of collectible card games is a giant skip full of broken stepladders and dirty blankets, but every so often you find a perfectly serviceable coffee table. Duelyst is my coffee table. I’ve been playing for 60+ hours, bullying my way up the ranks with questionable tactics and ugly monsters. But yesterday, at the stroke of midnight, I fought the dumbest, most spectacular multiplayer match I have ever played, not just in Duelyst, but probably any game. My trouble is: how do I explain this to someone who doesn’t fight in this sleazy free-to-play arena of monsters and microscopic maths? How do I communicate to you just how intractibly stupid this game was? Let’s try using words.
]]>If Hearthstone is the Pokemon of today’s free-to-play card battling, Duelyst [official site] sometimes feels like the Digimon – lesser-known but still beloved and popular enough to get by. Also: objectively better in every way. Some big changes are coming in the next patch though, including the addition of AI-controlled bosses who will change every week and bleed rewards when you defeat them. That’s good. Meanwhile, the daily challenges – small one-turn problems that are Duelyst’s equivalent to chess puzzles - are being put on hold. That’s sad.
Let's have a more detailed look at the changes, and what else is good or sad.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
I bounced off Hearthstone, and I couldn’t care less about Magic: The Gathering. If there was a Netrunner adaptation for the PC, I’d play that endlessly, but apart from that I tend to shy away from collectible card games. All that deck-stacking, all those tiny sums. It just feels dirty. So why do I love Duelyst so much?
]]>Oh, hey, is that Rise of the Bloodborn, the second expansion to free-to-play card-battler Duelyst [official site]? We didn’t see you come in. Oh, what’s that - you snuck in through patch 1.78, which went live a couple of days ago? Please, make yourself at home. I'll just tidy up a bit while you get settled.
]]>As December approaches like a runaway sled and we prepare to say our goodbyes to 2016, it's natural to reflect on the year as a whole. Those reflections could easily take the form of laments but we're keeping our focus firmly on the world of PC games, where we've identified ten trends that may not have defined 2016, but have certainly helped to shape it. We delve into Sorcery and synthwave, DOOM and Danganronpa, and much more besides.
]]>Duelyst is Hearthstone’s child. You can see the shared DNA everywhere, from the menu layout and free to play business model to specific minion abilities and hero powers. Almost everything Hearthstone does, however, Duelyst does better. I’ve spent years grinding away at the Hearthstone mill, but now I’ll never go back.
]]>Despite a growing wealth of awesome free-to-play games, the term itself remains a dirty word for a lot of people. But free-to-play isn't as black and white as some would like to believe. We've all paid top dollar for a game only to feel disappointed, and likewise, free-to-play doesn't have to mean being drip-fed bits of game in between rigorous bouts of patting you down to find where your wallet is. And that's exactly what Keith Lee and Emil Anticevic, head honchos over at Counterplay Games, the developer of Duelyst [official site], have been trying to prove.
]]>Tactics ‘Em Up Duelyst [official site] has left open beta to join the ranks of games that are really-for-real out now, no foolin'. It's a free-to-play collectible card game with a tactical board on which you position units, whose cool blues and hot pinks initially saw it healthily Kickstarted back in March 2014. There's a couple of new trailers below to mark the release.
]]>Duelyst [official site] is now in open beta. The turn-based strategy game was successfully Kickstarted last year and has been in closed beta for some time, but now anyone can sign up and play via its site.
]]>Duelyst [official site] raied double its modest Kickstarter target early last year, and impressed us in June when Marsh tried the free-to-play game's closed alpha. He thought it a "whip-smart mixture of card play and turn-based tactics." If you'd like to try it for yourself, we've got 10,000 keys to giveaway for the game's ongoing closed beta.
]]>If this year’s E3 was anything to go by, 2015 may well prove to be the year of the collectible card game. All the big names seemed to have one, but none of them seemed to be able to tell you why theirs was the one you should play. For me, these johnny-come-latelys may have already been rather handily upstaged: none seemed to advertise anything like the ingenuity of the free-to-play Duelyst [official site], with its whip-smart mixture of card play and turnbased tactics, whereby you summon fantastical units to a gridded arena and duke it out until one general falls.
It’s in closed alpha at the moment, and I’ve been really enjoying it - though I feel I’ve barely scratched the surface of the strategies that are possible. Luckily, I’ve been able to pick the ample brains of Counterplay Games’ Keith Lee about Duelyst’s six factions, their varied tactics and the long-term ambitions to use the aggregated wins and losses of players to inform an ongoing epic narrative.
]]>Counterplay Games raised $137,707 (£90,000-ish) on Kickstarter in 2014 for Duelyst [official site] with a dream of turn-based tactical combat focused on competitive ranked multiplayer. It was to run under that quaint 'pay-once-and-get-a-game' model, with pledges offering the game starting at $15 (£10) and running up to $70 (£45) for versions with fancy skins and instant unlocks of units and spells. Well! Eleven months later, Counterplay have changed their minds, and announced it'll be free-to-play.
]]>For eons now, humanity's greatest philosophers, scientists, and Internet commenters have debated over the correct usage and spelling of the word "duel." When you use that version? When is it "dual"? Despite being an incredibly simple binary, the true answer is still shrouded in mystery. And now, more confusion. A third entrant to the dual duel of due(a)ling-ness: Duelyst. It's a gorgeous-looking turn-based strategy RPG from developers who headed up the likes of Diablo III, Ratchet and Clank, and Rogue Legacy, but it's focused on rapid-fire Hearthstone-style competition instead of a winding Banner-Saga-esque, er, saga. Don't let that frighten you off, though. There's a lot of promise in this one. Also, it's not free-to-play. One purchase, one even playing field. Reveal video/interview below.
]]>
