George TsagkarakisIn Brief:
- Games for a Living (GFAL) opens the World War II: TCG beta to the public on iOS and Android on Nov. 28. A closed test for the GFAL community starts Nov. 26.
- The card game has been offline since 2022, when backend provider GameSparks shut down. Two co-founders of original developer FrozenShard Games are now GFAL executives.
- After the beta, GFAL plans to let players own and trade eligible cards on the GFAL Marketplace, with wallet use optional. It hasn’t given a marketplace date or said which cards can be traded.
World War II: TCG returns to phones on Nov. 28, when Games for a Living opens a public beta on the App Store and Google Play. The game has been offline for more than three years.
“The wait is almost over!” the studio’s @GFAL_Official account said in a post on X. “WWII: TCG Open Beta launches on November 28. Build your deck, command iconic WWII units, and join the battle on mobile.”
The wait is almost over!
WWII: TCG Open Beta launches on November 28. Build your deck, command iconic WWII units, and join the battle on mobile.
Thanks to @BCGbiz for covering our return! 👇
Testing starts two days earlier. The Barcelona studio said a closed beta for its community begins Nov. 26, ahead of the open build on Nov. 28.
Progress resets after the beta
GFAL said it will use the beta to collect gameplay feedback and will then reset player progress. Nothing earned during the test carries over.
A full mobile release comes after the beta. GFAL hasn’t announced a date for it. The studio also plans a PC version for Steam and the Epic Games Store.
Card trading planned, wallet optional
The web3 features come after the beta ends. GFAL said players will then be able to own and trade eligible digital collectible cards through the GFAL Marketplace.
The company said web3 participation will be optional. Players can build decks and compete without connecting a crypto wallet.
Two things are still open: when the marketplace goes live and which rules decide which cards qualify for trading. GFAL hasn’t published either.
One of three GFAL titles in testing
GFAL announced the revival in October along with Legends, a football management game, and Diamond Jewels Solitaire. Its roadmap puts all three into testing in the fourth quarter.
Legends is down for an alpha and Solitaire for a beta.
Why the game went dark
FrozenShard Games released World War II: TCG on iOS on March 6, 2014, then on Android on June 19, 2014. A Steam version followed on Feb. 23, 2019.
The game ran on GameSparks. When that service closed, FrozenShard said in a 2022 notice that it had looked for another provider. It concluded a move would be too complex because so many of the game’s features depended on the existing backend.
FrozenShard pulled the game from the App Store, Google Play and Steam in September 2022.
The revival comes through FrozenShard’s own founders. Christian Gascons, a FrozenShard co-founder, is now chief operating officer at GFAL. Marc Tormo, another co-founder, is its chief creative officer.
How the original played
Decks were built from tanks, infantry, aircraft, ships and submarines based on historical units and equipment, including Japan’s A6M Zero fighter and Germany’s Tiger tank. The original game had five factions: German, Russian, Japanese, American and British.
Players could mix units from different armies and pair their abilities with equipment and orders cards. Each turn gave three action points to spend on moves such as deploying cards or promoting units already on the board.
Promotion raised a unit’s stats and could add new abilities. A promoted unit that was destroyed went back into the deck and could be drawn again with its upgrades intact.
The original also had historical missions, ranked multiplayer, crafting and cooperative raids.
It started with a Kickstarter campaign that raised $18,001 from 199 backers.
