Wizards of the Coast has been trying to make digital Magic: The Gathering a thing since 1997 with the Microprose-developed and published computer game, Magic: The Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers with many other titles published since.
In 2009, they tried yet again with a game released on Xbox 360 called, conveniently enough, Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers.
Developed by Stainless Games and published by Wizards of the Coast, Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers (not to be confused with that 1997 PC game), came out as a timed exclusive on Xbox 360 in June of 2009, followed by releases for Windows PC and PlayStation 3 on June and November of 2010, respectively.
The game, at its core, follows the standard-at-the-time rules for the paper Magic: The Gathering collectible card game with players playing lands, summoning creatures, and casting spells as they try to defeat their AI-controlled opponent. Unlike the paper game, however, players cannot make their own decks in the video game.
Stainless Games characterized the game as an “arcade” version of the much more complicated paper game and, as such, simplified a chunk of the gameplay to make the video game much more approachable to new players. For example, as mentioned, there is no deck construction. Instead, players simply have access to a limited number of preconstructed decks to take into battle. As they play against and defeat opponents, however, new decks and cards are unlocked to make these preconstructed decks more powerful.
WATCH: Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers | A look back at MTG's 2009 video game
Another example of gameplay simplification within the video game is, rather than players manually tapping lands, the game software auto-taps them for them based upon the cards that are remaining in one’s hand.
Also, whenever an action occurs that other players could respond to, a brief timer appears to allow for player actions, though players can pause the timer should they need more time to contemplate their possible responses.
Furthermore, players are given a free mulligan at the beginning of each match with any further mulligans resulting in that player re-drawing their hand, less one card for each instance.
Another way Stainless Games helps newer players in this game is by providing the option to bias shuffle the opponent’s deck. This results in the AI opponent’s more powerful cards to be stacked at or near the bottom of its deck and, thus, will be unlikely to be drawn and used. As the player progresses through the game, though, this shuffling bias becomes less and less enforced, thus allowing players to become more likely to face certain powerful cards as they progress further and further through the game.
As for the game’s AI, it doesn’t actually employ any strategy in terms of card combinations and synergies. Rather, it uses a decision tree based upon the computer’s situation at the time.
To simplify task evaluation, it employs a look-ahead algorithm that strives to be correct 99 percent of the time. That stated, it only looks ahead roughly six total actions at a time. As a result, players found the AI’s behavior to be noticeably different than that of a human opponent, such as not holding back blockers when attacking as the AI tends to be more aggressive than the typical human opponent. Likewise, the AI doesn’t take into consideration what its human opponent might do in response or on a future turn – it simply takes the best actions for victory based upon what’s going on in the game at that exact moment.
As for the game itself, it features a handful of play modes:
- Campaign mode, where the player duels against several AI-controlled opponents for new decks and cards;
- Challenge mode, where the player must find the correct combination of plays on a single turn in order to defeat their opponent (akin to the Magic: The Puzzling challenges that were found back in the day in the The Duelist magazines);
- Single player mode versus an AI-controlled opponent, and;
- Co-operative play against the computer, including the then-popular “Two-Headed Giant” format.
Players can also play in both casual and ranked competitive games over Xbox Live. In the Windows PC version, players can play against one another, but the second player has to use a gamepad while player one uses the keyboard and mouse.
In October of 2009, the game’s first expansion, Duel the Dragon, came out. It added three new decks, three new cards for each of the eight original decks, six more campaign ladder matches, a new boss character (Nicol Bolas), and three new challenges.
The game’s second expansion, which came out in May 2010, adds three new cards to each of the game’s existing decks, as well as a few entirely new decks (including Nicol Bolas’ “Eons of Evil” deck from the previous expansion), new challenges, achievements, and so on.
Sales of Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers wasn’t too shabby as, in its first five weeks on the Xbox Live Marketplace, the game was downloaded more than 440,000 times with 170,000 full game purchases at $10 a pop. It was the Xbox 360’s top-ranked title for the first two weeks after release.
In terms of reviews, it received fairly favorable scores overall with outlets such as IGN giving the game a 7.8 out of 10 and Detructoid scoring the game at 7.5 out of 10.
Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers did well enough to earn itself a sequel a few years later, creatively named Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 on Windows PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3, but that’s a story for another video.
