The Lord of the Rings always seemed like it would be a good fit for a card game. Now fans of the fantasy series will get a chance to battle for Middle-earth with The Lord of the Rings: Adventure Card Game, which is out now.
The Lord of the Rings: Adventure Card Game is unique in that it’s a PvE game rather than the typical player versus player card game that is so common. It gets its inspiration from the hit tabletop card game The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, which was released back in 2011 from Fantasy Flight Games.
In the digital version of the card game, players build a deck of iconic heroes and challenge the forces of Sauron while traveling through famous locations from the literary world. You’ll complete story-driven quests and “forge a new legend of Middle-earth on your own or with a friend in cooperative mode.”
As you’d expect, The Lord of the Rings: Adventure Card Game is a story-driven card game. Timothy Gerritsen, Studio Head Fantasy Flight Interactive, explains:
In The Fellowship of the Ring, there is a multi-year period after Bilbo retires to Rivendell leaving the ring with Frodo in Bag End and the journey that Frodo embarks upon. Our game is set during that timeframe. Frodo has not yet begun his epic journey. The true nature of The One Ring is not yet known, but shadows stir and the grip of Sauron is spreading, unbeknownst to the heroes and free peoples of Middle-earth.
We’re setting the game into this period initially because it’s rife with potential for great adventures. There are dark stirrings all over Middle-earth, but the extent of the threat is not yet known. The Dwarves have returned to Erebor, and Bard rules in Dale after the events of The Hobbit, so there is hope amongst the free peoples, but the ever-present threat from Mordor hangs over everything.
We start the game in well-known locations from the books, but our goal is to dive deeper into the lore of those places as well as to explore beyond these usual places and seek out new adventures further afield into places that are mentioned in the original books but not explored.
By balancing the known with the not yet known, we hope to keep the stories fresh and exciting while being fully respectful of the tone and continuity of the original stories. As committed The Lord of the Rings fans, we strive to keep the game rooted very firmly in the world that Tolkien created.
The Lord of the Rings: Adventure Card Game is available now on PC and coming to PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. So far it is receiving “Mostly Positive” reviews from Steam users.
Check out the launch trailer below:
