#duelyst

[pixelchill]

pokemon dragapult created in a duelist pixel art format

[cats-in-video-games]

Azurite Lion from Duelyst

[feebelle]

Went from playing Hades obsessively to playing Duelyst II obsessively so had a go at making Zagreus a unit in the game

[maruposting]

THEY BROUGHT BACK DUELYST???

PLAY DUELYST.

IT’S LITERALLY FREE.

[pixelgrotto]

Pixelated Card Tactics

Whenever I look on Steam it seems like another digital card game's popping up. Apparently, the most recent hotness is Marvel Snap? I'm not especially informed, since when I play video games, I generally prefer to get lost in single-player, story-rich stuff. Also, if I'm going to play with cards, I'd rather hold 'em between my actual fingers - though to be frank, I don't play physical card games too often, or at least one-on-one stuff like Magic: The Gathering. This is largely due to the fact that I don't like losing. I wouldn't say I have a competitive personality, but when I'm up against a single foe, I'm awfully self-conscious about getting my butt whooped. (Cooperative or story-based card games like Arkham Horror are another thing.)

Whining aside, there are exceptions to my "meh" feelings toward 1v1 digital card games, and the biggest one is Duelyst, which can best be described as Hearthstone with strategic positioning. In Duelyst, you choose one of several factions - Lyonar (paladin types), Songhai (vaguely Asian), Vetruvian (desert robots), Abyssian (basically the Zerg from Starcraft), Magmar (kaiju) and Vanar (snow people). After choosing a faction, you proceed to select your units, each of which is represented by a single card. There's also a neutral faction to help fill out your deck. Finally, once you've got your troops assembled, you duke it out with other folks online.

Don't get me wrong; while I might like Duelyst, I'm not great at it. I lose regularly and haven't managed to break Silver on the seasonal ladder yet. I'm also sort of anti-social, perhaps due to the anxiety I feel around losing, and I have a grand total of 0 people on my friend list. But there's just something to Duelyst that draws me, and if I had to pinpoint it, I'd probably highlight the delicious pixel art and the appeal of actually moving little characters around a board.

To put this another way, I'm of the opinion that Final Fantasy Tactics is one of the best games in its franchise, and Duelyst is reminiscent of FFT, minus the rotating polygonal map. Sure, you choose a "deck" of sorts, but instead of watching pieces of paper fly around as in Hearthstone, you get to see a nicely-animated sprite slice up another nicely-animated sprite. As I said before, if I'm gonna play with cards, I'd rather hold 'em in my hands - but Duelyst circumvents this desire by making its "cards" exquisitely "video gamey." Reminding me of Final Fantasy Tactics at the same time is a nice cherry on top.

Duelyst also holds a special place for me because it's one of the first projects I ever Kickstarted. Originally crowdfunded in 2013, Duelyst was made by Counterplay Games, who described it as the final form of a homebrew tabletop game that ex-Diablo III and Rogue Legacy devs worked on in their spare time. It was supposed to be a one-time purchase designed for fast and furious tactical combat, and it looked pretty as heck. I backed Duelyst right after Mighty No. 9 (which turned out to be a turd) and Hyper Light Drifter (def not a turd; I wrote about it here). I was there for all the drama when the devs decided that the game was going to be a free-to-player affair instead of a stand-alone purchase, and I was also there when Bandai Namco got the publishing rights and shut Duelyst down in 2020 despite promises of steady support.

That was a supremely sad move, but three years later, Dream Sloth Games acquired the rights to release a spiritual successor in the form of Duelyst II. The game's largely the same as the original with fewer, rebalanced cards, which might irk hardcore players but is something I can deal with. Thankfully, the first iteration of Duelyst is included in Duelyst II as a legacy freebie, and it's also available on duelyst.gg as an impressive fanmade recreation. To make this revival even sweeter, at the end of 2022, Duelyst's source code was released to the public under Creative Commons, ensuring that pixelated card tactics will live on in multiple formats forever.

This is an amazing resurrection for a title that was considered dead in the water just a little while ago, and there's some stuff I'd like to see in the future if the game continues to evolve. A story mode a la Gwent would be neat - Duelyst's certainly got enough unlockable lore to support such a thing, and several animated trailers were released in 2016 that fired up my imagination regarding the game's world. Then again, maybe those are just my single-player roots showing.

Even if a story mode never manifests, I'm grateful to see one of the only digital card experiences to truly absorb me alive and thriving. I'll continue playing Duelyst on and off for a long while, and I hope that the game's new iterations attract a legion of fresh fans. Just don't necessarily ask me to play with you - I'm perfectly glad messing around with Vanar in my own private time, filling the board with ice and being as happily anti-social as always.

[hikorzik]

On my bullshit again (duelyst)

[arxile]

Lilithe Blightchaser doodle.

Character from the CCG Duelyst, which died completely in early 2020 but now some people are working on a successor I think. I was just doodling something and ended up with her by mistake, which led to me discovering the reboot. Serendipity.

[sapphiel]

Lilithe Blightchaser from Duelyst

I don’t actually play this game, but a friend of mine, specifically @cosmicfails does, but then news came out that the game is gonna be shut down in a month... so he requested this to pay tribute to one of his favorite games, and his favorite character in it~