Blizzard has announced Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, an online collectable card game set in the Warcraft universe. The free to play strategy game is heading into beta this summer.
Hearthstone, revealed at PAX East, will contain 300 unlockable cards upon its release. Cards can be bought in packs of 5 (roughly $1) or earned gradually through gameplay. Unwanted cards can be ‘disenchanted’ to create dust, which can be used to build different cards.
A small team of only fifteen developers has been working on Hearthstone, viewed as a “small step out of our [Blizzard’s] comfort zone” as the company aims for a wider market – mobile and casual gamers. Blizzard promises that players can learn how to play the game, and importantly, have fun with it, in less than five minutes.
Alongside a standard play mode and a practice mode, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft also offers a forge mode, where you build your deck by choosing from three random cards, and once your deck is complete, you battle it out with other players whose deck has been built in the same way.
The team has released a six-minute ‘making-of’ trailer to illustrate how Hearthstone aims to retain the distinctive feel of a Blizzard game.
A short cinematic trailer, showing off plenty of concept art, has also been released:
Hearthstone may take Warcraft fans aback by this side-step into casual gaming, but this move highlights Blizzard’s awareness of the growing market for iPad based gaming.
No release date has been set, but Hearthstone‘s iPad release will follow a PC and Mac release. Further platforms such as Android are likely to follow at a later date. You can sign up for the beta test through Battle.Net.
Are you surprised by the direction Blizzard is taking? Will you be looking to sign up for the beta test?
Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment
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