CD Projekt Red, developers of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and proprietors of the GOG game store, have found themselves propelled to triple-A status through the success of their fantasy role-playing series. Their newest game, though, feels like something rare for a developer of this scale: a passion project.

Like many sprawling RPGs, The Witcher *3 *featured a minigame—in this case, a card game called Gwent that felt like a stripped-down version of collectible card games like Magic: the Gathering. Even during development, Gwent showed promise. "When our project leads were playing [The Witcher 3], some of them played more Gwent than the actual game," says Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz, a narrative and quest designer at CD Projekt Red. "That was the first sign that we might actually have stumbled upon something very special."

Fans agreed; the game team received a flood of tweets, Facebook messages, emails, even a mod that converted The Witcher 3's combat exclusively into Gwent. Everyone, it seemed, wanted a Gwent game. CDPR listened, officially unveiling Gwent: The Witcher Card Game last week at the E3 game expo.

The studio didn't settle for a simple adaptation, though: Gwent looks to be one of the more ambitious titles in a rapidly expanding world of videogames based on simulated card games.

The Hearthstone Effect

Over the past couple of years, the market for digital card games has exploded. Why? Hearthstone. Developed by Blizzard and released in 2014, it has been a dizzying success. Who wants to play a card game on the internet? Everyone, apparently; the free-to-play title is massive, and is one of the most-viewed titles on the Twitch streaming platform. As I write this, the game has 50,000 viewers, narrowly beating out Overwatch.

Hearthstone is a collectible card game, built in the vein of the definitive genre originator, Magic: The Gathering. Players collect cards with unique abilities, building decks as synergistic machines of elaborate strategies and killer moves. The rhythm of collecting new cards and testing out new ideas is an addictive one, and games like Hearthstone obviate the unwrapping and sifting that come with card collecting in meatspace. Everything you need, you can get from the couch.

CD Projekt Red

CD Projekt Red isn't the only big developer looking to get in on the CCG trend, which has already filled the indie marketplace with a million riffs on the concept. Bethesda devoted some of its pre-E3 press conference time to Elder Scrolls: Legends, its own take on the model. Because the development pipeline at larger studios is much slower than at indies, capitalizing on surprise successes can take time; by now, two years after the initial release of Hearthstone, the big card game tsunami isn't far offshore.

Even in that busy landscape, though, Gwent feels distinct. Initially developed to serve as a minigame within The Witcher 3, it plays to a different set of masters than its contemporaries. There's no "mana" or other similar resource management as in Magic. Instead, there's just a battlefield with three levels: infantry, ranged, and artillery. Each card has a numerical value, and can be placed in one of the three levels. Rounds end when both players pass a turn; the player with the highest number at the end of each round wins it. Best of three takes the whole match.

It's a fast, deceptively simple game. While other CCGs encourage complex strategizing and card-based maneuvers, Gwent encourages deception and feints. How can I trick my enemy into playing all his best cards in the first round? Maybe I'll lose a round on purpose.

There are some embellishments for the standalone release, a more expansive card catalogue and more focus on how the game's different factions—modelled after the regions and races in The Witcher universe, naturally—play distinct from one another. But, by and large, this will be Gwent as Witcher players remember it. Quick, addictive, and deeper than it looks.

CD Projekt Red hasn't announced a release date for the final project yet, but it's going to be a free-to-play title with in-game transactions. A multiplayer beta is coming for Xbox One and PC this September, with PlayStation 4 coming later on.

Hands, Solo: It's Singleplayer Too

Gwent: The Witcher Card Game isn't just multiplayer, either; in fact, Tomaszkiewicz seems most excited about its singleplayer outings. During a short presentation at E3, I got a glimpse of one such campaign. It was fully voiced, with lushly drawn animated cutscenes and a straightforward, top-down exploration system that padded out the combat. Think a traditional Japanese RPG like one of the old Final Fantasy games—only instead of turn-based combat, it's a card game.

CD Projekt Red

And those cards are more than metaphor. Tomaszkiewicz says that the campaigns will be about playing leaders of men, from small bands of adventurers to the captivatingly flawed kings and emperors that rule over The Witcher's world. Your decks aren't just abstractions: they're your army.

Each campaign, Tomaszkiewicz says, will last about ten hours. While that's a pittance compared to the 100+ hours many sank into *The Witcher 3, *Gwent campaigns serve a different narrative purpose: these are like short stories that expand the universe beyond the sprawling novels of the main games; notes in the margins of a world that has plenty more stories left to tell.

"Gwent surprised us," Tomaszkiewicz says. "We started out making a minigame, and ended up with a full game within the game [of Witcher 3]. Now I think we can do something very special with it." CD Projekt Red made its name in The Witcher's universe; now, with the trilogy complete, they seem thrilled to have a reason to play in it a little longer.