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Activision Launches Free-To-Play Mobile Card Game Skylanders Battlecast
Activision has launched its free-to-play mobile collectible card game based on the popular toys-to-life franchise Skylanders. Skylanders Battlecast takes the collection aspect of the franchise to a new level as players are able to work toward building massive collections of cards to take into battle. Unlike many other collectible card games, Skylanders Battlecast puts an emphasis on the visuals in order to make the battles as entertaining and engaging to watch as possible.
The ultimate goal is to best your opponents in card duels in hopes of becoming a champion of the Skylands through matchmaking and direct friend challenges, but players can also battle against Kaos in a single-player story mode. As players play through the more than 60 missions across eight elemental islands in the campaign, they can collect up to 300 character, spell, gear, and relic cards. Battle reward gold that can be used to purchase in-game cards, with the rewards given out based on how many challenges you complete within that mission.
To tie into the Skylanders toys-to-life pedigree, players who want to take their collecting to a new level can also purchase physical packs of cards from retailers. Starting today, players can buy physical cards from retailers through the Skylanders Battlecast Battle packs, which feature 22 cards for $9.99, and the Skylanders Booster packs, which include eight cards for $4.99. Using the physical cards from those packs, players can also use special augmented reality features within the app and then add the cards to their battle deck.
The Skylanders Battlecast app is now available to download for free on the iOS App Store, the Google Play store, and the Amazon Appstore. To see Battlecast in action, check out the trailer below.
Our Take
Free-to-play often gets a bad name thanks to those developers and publishers that have abused it through hefty microtransactions and skimping on the free content, but there are myriad examples of free-to-play games that strike a strong balance between the free and premium content on offer. I like what I see from Skylanders Battlecast in terms of the gameplay and the structure built around it, so I'm hopeful that Activision can find that sweet spot with its free-to-play formula.
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