Square Enix turned Final Fantasy into a digital card game

While CES 2019 occupies everyone’s attention in the U.S., Square Enix quietly announced the free-to-play Final Fantasy Digital Card Game.

Announced for PC and smartphones, Final Fantasy Digital Card Game takes the popular Final Fantasy franchise and turns it into a turn-based card game. You can make your own decks that consist of various characters and summons from the Final Fantasy series. These characters show up as 16-bit sprites when placed on the grid.

From the sounds of it, you’ll be able to level up characters in your deck. The character customization is probably where the in-game micro-transactions come in since you’ll likely be able to buy new cards if leveling up doesn’t sound like fun.

The battles aren’t designed to take too much of your time — each battle features a time limit and 12-turn limit. When combined with the 16-bit character pop-ups and castle backdrop, card battles look like 16-bit dioramas.

Other gameplay details remain light at the time of this writing. That said, Square Enix will run a closed beta test from January 18 through January 25. You can go to Final Fantasy Digital Card Game’s official website to sign up for the beta. The beta will accept a maximum number of 10,000 players.

The game will launch on the Yahoo! Japan Game Plus platform sometime this year. We’re not sure if the game will be released in other regions. We should note that Square Enix released numerous Final Fantasy titles for mobile around the world, so we could see Final Fantasy Digital Card Game follow the status quo.