Upper Deck has confirmed that it is sailing forth with a new game set in the Neopets franchise. The new title is a trading card game that is the company’s latest ambitious project. The core set of the game is set to arrive in 2024 and the new TCG will feature what it has described as a unique dice combat system.
More than 250 custom pieces of art was created for the first set with a star assembly of designers coming together to make this happen, among whom are Shamine Athena King, Krista Staggs, and Anthony Conley. The game will focus on two-player head-to-head battles, with a trailer already released for Neopets Battledome and what players can expect from the returning franchise.
The new game is celebrating the franchise’s 25th anniversary after Neopets was first launched in 1999 as a virtual pet website. Neopets soared to its peak popularity in the mid-2000s with some 35 million unique users from all across the globe. However, the franchise was eventually shuttered by its parent company and later acquired by World of Neopia Inc, an independent company.
World of Neopia purchased the IP with the hopes of reviving it, and the company hopes that its collaboration with Upper Deck will help it achieve just that. This is not the first time a trading card game based on the franchise has been released, with Wizards of the Coast attempting something similar in 2003 but the game failing to gain momentum and eventually discontinued in 2006.