Legends of Runeterra

Legends of Runeterra took the characters and world of League of Legends and carried them into a card game that, from the start, carved out its path as a counterweight to the aggressive monetization typical of the genre – cards unlock through play or can be crafted directly from in-game resources, with none of the classic loot boxes with hidden contents found here. Riot Games bet on elaborate mechanics, where combat unfolds in rounds with the ability to react to an opponent's moves, setting the game apart from simpler rival titles in the genre, and it also added an extensive single-player mode, Path of Champions, with its own story cards for characters.

On a touchscreen, cards are played by dragging them from hand onto the board, and this works just as naturally as it did on the PC the game arrived on mobile from, while the card and environment artwork maintains a high visual standard comparable to the main game. Even so, Legends of Runeterra never reached a popularity comparable to Hearthstone or Marvel Snap, and in 2024 Riot Games announced it was significantly scaling back active development of new card sets and game content, moving the game into maintenance mode. For players, this means the game remains functional and playable, but they can't expect regular expansions with new cards and mechanics as before – an interesting story for a title that offered one of the most generous economies in the genre, yet still failed to commercially succeed enough to keep its full development support.

Why play it: for card game players who will appreciate a fair economy without loot boxes, though they should expect that new content now arrives only rarely.