League of Legends now has an in-client roguelike game that players say feels a lot like indie hit Balatro. The problem is, if you want to see everything it has to offer, you’ll need to play actual games of League of Legends to progress.
The Demon’s Hand dropped last night, somehow managing to remain a complete surprise until it showed up in the client. I’ve not had the chance to play it yet, but Riot has helpfully outlined the basics – every round, you deal damage to your opponents based on the cumulative attack values of the cards you’ve put together, augmenting the game with powerful sigils. If that sounds a little bit like Balatro’s Jokers, that’s because it is.
Overall, players seem pretty impressed. Riot is generally quite good when it comes to in-client experiences like this, and for the relative gimmick it is, The Demon’s Hand seems to mostly live up to its inspiration. Some somewhat gnarly performance issues seem to be the major concern, but perhaps the biggest issue is progression.
Story difficulty isn’t too tricky, but if you really want to see everything that the game has to offer, you’ll want to up the difficulty. Hard Mode and Demon Mode – presumably the equivalent of Balatro’s tougher Antes – are unlocked by gathering eight or 16 ‘Rare’ Sigils. The catch is that the only way to do that is by playing actual games of League of Legends, and while that’s something I’ve been doing for far too long now, it’s not a fate I’d wish upon casual Balatro-enjoyers.
What’s worse is that finding those Sigils seems to be a matter of luck – some players say they’ve received none after multiple games, whereas others claim they’ve been gifted a handful after just a single Arena match. You can make it easier to find more Sigils by completing missions, but the RNG element seems to be a little harsh.
One of Riot’s previous spin-offs was a Vampire Survivors-like, which is ironic since the roguelike’s creator says he was lucky to dodge the waves of knockoffs.
