Fantasy Flight Games is putting their KeyForge franchise on hiatus due to a unique issue involving a central algorithm used to randomly generate decks for the game. The games publisher recently announced that it was placing its KeyForge game on hiatus “with plans to relaunch the game with new life at a later date.” The reason for the hiatus is due to a unique issue that involves the algorithm used to randomly generate entire decks of cards that are then sold to players. “The deckbuilding algorithm for KeyForge is broken and needs to be rebuilt from the ground up,” Fantasy Flight Games stated in a blogpost announcing the hiatus. “This is neither an easy process nor a fast one, which is why the game will be going on hiatus for a while.”
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However, Fantasy Flight vowed that the game would return and showed off its next planned expansion – Winds of Exchange – which would be released as part of its relaunch. The next expansion is already developed, which means that it will be able to go to print as soon as Fantasy Flight fixes the game’s algorithm. Fantasy Flight also noted that it had plans to develop a digital version of KeyForge with Stainless Games.
KeyForge is a deck-based card game designed by Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic: The Gathering. Unlike other deck games that involves buying booster packs and then building a deck, players purchase full decks of KeyForge cards, each of which is completely unique thanks to the aforementioned algorithm. Each deck has its own strengths and weaknesses and players can balance out disparities between their decks using a unique handicap system. Each deck consisted of cards from three factions, but players could only activate cards of any one faction on a particular turn.
Fantasy Flight Games has seemingly been scaling back its releases over the past year. It recently announced that it had no plans to produce any more expansions for Mansion of Madness, a popular game set in the Arkham Horror universe, and it also recently wrapped up its Legend of the Five Rings Living Card Game.
