Card games are one of the more fascinating genres in gaming. Everyone recognizes a playing card when they see one, but take any two games and "having a card" may be the only thing they have in common. It is a very diverse medium, with a different game for everyone out there. 

Unfortunately, it is also a niche space, and competing for an audience in a niche may mean you don't garner enough of an audience to sustain yourself. And, sadly, that is the fate of the vast majority of card games out there.

In this article, we'll take a look at such a game, Chronicle: RuneScape Legends (referred to as RuneScape Legends going forward). We'll check out a short history of the game, how it's played, and why it was ultimately abandoned. If you'd like to see this become a semi-regular series, let us know in the comments below!

The Game's Origin

Before we talk about the card game, a little context. RuneScape is an MMORPG that was released in 2001 by Jagex, and it's still going today. This makes it one of the oldest MMOs that's still being played today, beating Blizzard's World of Warcraft by about 3 years (ignore the fact that RuneScape has had a few updated versions).

RuneScape Legends is a card game set in the MMO's world. It is to RuneScape like Hearthstone is to World of Warcraft. A beta version of RuneScape Legends was released in November 2015, with a full release of the game on Steam in 2016. With the popularity of RuneScape,
many players also engage in trading RuneScape gold, enhancing their in-game experiences.

How To Play RuneScape Legends

RuneScape Legends is a 1v1 game. The goal of the game is to defeat your opponent by bringing their Life points to 0. It uses a class system similar to Hearthstone, with each class having its own pool of cards it has access to, as well as a neutral card pool. We'll talk about the classes later.

Each player has 5 stats that they need to keep track of: 

  • Weapon - The first number represents its attack, while the second is its durability.
    • Weapon Attack - increases your character's Attack by that amount.
    • Weapon Durability - decreases by 1 after your hero attacks, and the weapon is destroyed when it reaches 0.
  • Attack - Used to fight enemies.
  • Gold - Used to purchase Adventure cards.
  • Health - Bring your opponent's to 0 to win the game. 
  • Armor - Is reduced instead of your Health when you take damage.


From left to right: Weapon, Attack, Gold, Health, Armor

Each player starts with 6 cards in hand and can mulligan any away. The player who goes second also draws an extra card. Each player also starts with no Weapon, 2 Attack, 0 Gold, 30 Life, and no Armor. Both players then choose up to 4 cards in their hand, and place them on the board. Your opponent's card will appear "face down" to you.


The game board. There are 4 slots in front of your character where you place your cards.

This is where things real interesting. Your opponent won't have to deal with the cards here. You are! Each player in RuneScape Legends has to play against themselves. There are cards that allow you to interact with your opponent (the game wouldn't be very interesting otherwise), but it's entirely possible to go a whole game and ignore each other until the final fight.

To understand how players interact with cards, let's take a look at them. One of the two types of cards in the game is the Adventure card. When coming across one of these, you pay its Gold cost, after which the effect takes place and you get the stats at the bottom of the card. If you don't have enough Gold, the card doesn't activate, but you also don't spend the Gold.


An Adventure card

The other type of card in the game is the Fight card, usually representing monsters. The Chaos Dwogre shown below has its stats on the top part of the card, in this case being 7 Attack and 5 Health. When a player comes across a Fight card, they'll have to, well, fight it, taking turns damaging each other.

Your hero always attacks first, so a great strategy is to increase your attack to kill them in one shot and avoid taking damage. Once a monster is killed, the effect in the card's text box takes effect, and the stats at the bottom of the card are added to your hero (this is how you usually get gold for Adventure cards). Careful, if a monster reduces your attack to 0, you lose the game!


A Fight card

In addition to the basic rarity cards, which are unlocked for free as you play the game, there are 4 rarities, Sapphire, Emerald, Ruby, and Diamond. You can tell how rare a card is by counting the number of sides each gem has, the more sides, the rarer.


Diamond, Ruby, Emerald, Sapphire and Basic cards

Now that we know how the cards in the game work, let's get back to our match. When one player is done setting up their cards, they click the submit button, which will start a timer for the opponent to finish up their board. If you plan your moves early, you can start the timer early, putting your opponent on the ropes and possibly forcing them to make mistakes.

Once both players are done setting up, they start resolving their cards. The first player will always resolve theirs first, with players taking turns resolving cards. When all the cards on the field are resolved, the round (called a Chapter) ends, and players go to the next round, drawing 3 cards and starting a new Chapter, repeating the process.

There are 5 Chapters in a game. At the end of the fifth Chapter, players fight, until only one players remains standing.

The Classes

The game launched with 5 different classes, with a 5 one added down the road. Each class has its own unique playstyle that focused on a certain aspect of the game. Let's take a quick look at each of them.

Ariane - The Mage

Ariane's playstyle revolves around Aventure cards, with powerful spells that can deal damage to your opponent or weaken any Monsters you might come across in your journey. You can also increase the stats of your opponent's cards to mess up their strategy, or reduce your base Attack to gain powerful rewards.

The Raptor - The Tank

The Raptor is all about gaining Armor. This allows you to tank heavy attacks from strong monsters to gain their powerful rewards. When the final battle comes, your opponent will still be chipping down your Armor by the time they kill you. Careful, though, as The Raptor has little actual healing, so any effects that bypass Armor will kill you before you reach the end of your adventure.

Ozan - The Thief

As the name implies, Ozan is all about stealing stuff. Mostly Gold. You get to multiply your Gold throughout the game, and then spend it on powerful equipment that you get to take in the final fight. You can also throw a wrench in your opponent's plan by stealing their Gold, so they can't afford their own equipment.

Linza - The Blacksmith

Linza's specialty is the weapon. During the game, you'll increase your weapon's Attack and Durability until it will make a simple carpenting hammer look like a warhammer. You'll also get to battle your opponent at various points in the game, wearing them down until the final battle.

Vanescula - The Vampyre

Vanescula's main strategy revolves around draining the life out of her opponent. This applies to both the monsters you face and your opponent. If you're playing against a Vampyre, there's a good chance you won't make it to the final fight. However, her playstyle usually also involves taking damage, so a crafty opponent may also be able to finish her in the middle of a Chapter.

Morvran - The Slayer Master

Introduced to the game later down the line, Morvran is all about killing dangerous and specific monsters. His Slayer Task cards give him specific bonuses for each creature of a certain type that was killed, and Aggressive monsters will grant you higher than average rewards, but will deal damage to your hero before you get a chance to hit.

PRESENTATION!

One of the things the game absolutely nails is presentation! It could've simply gone with a 4x2 grid where you place your cards and players just take turns resolving them, and it would've worked just fine. 


Ozan, thinking about his next move

Instead, RuneScape Legends presents its gameplay loop as a sort of board game between two actual people. The game leans heavily on a sort of pop-up book that changes whenever you turn the page. When you cue up against a player, you see them approaching the game table, before the "book" opens up and you mulligan your cards.


Vanescula, happy with something her miniature did

Each player has a miniature of their character that they place on the board, and it moves around during gameplay. The miniature has some limited poses that changes whenever it attacks a creature or when it takes damage. In the background, your opponent's avatar will look like its thinking while the cards are placed on the table, and will react during gameplay when something happens to the miniature. It's great stuff!

What Happened to the Game

Sadly, Jagex discontinued the game in 2018. The exact reason is unclear, but it's likely because the game didn't reach a large enough audience to warrant continued development. If you try to download the game on Steam, it'll get stuck at the very end, so you can't even enter into the starting menu.

There's a bit of good news. A few days ago, Reddit user Kapistijn posted that they've managed to remake the game in a playable, albeit limited, state, called Chronicle Rewritten. You won't get the presentation stuff mention above, there's no matchmaking, and it doesn't have all the cards yet, but it's a great way to experience how this game used to be. This version already received an update that added a few missing cards and some quality of life improvements.

What did you think about our brief look at RuneScape Legends? Any other games you'd like to see covered? Let us know in the comments below!

As the game is no longer available, we had to take screenshots from other people's videos. You can find the sources below.