Lord of the Rings mobile game asks players to preserve Middle-earth’s history

In The Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-earth, which launched on Wednesday for Android and iOS devices, players must keep intact the timeline of JRR Tolkien’s most beloved works. That generally means reenacting major events in turn-based battles, where the good guys prevail.

But not all the time.

“There’s actually a section in the tutorial where we actually unlock the ‘Shadow Side’ campaigns where our narrator, Eärendil, actually speaks to it,” Nicolas Reinhart, Capital Games’ game director, told Polygon. “But actually he’s hurt — he doesn’t like you having to go in and make sure the bad guys win.”

“The bad things have yet to happen,” added design director Jay Ambrosini.

But the bad things will follow the rest of the good things that Capital Games has envisioned The Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-eartha “collection RPG” in the form of Star Wars:Galaxy of Heroesthe highly successful Android and iOS title that Capital Games launched in 2015 in conjunction with Electronic Arts Galaxy of heroes, Heroes of Middle-earth is a free-to-play game that revolves around unlocking, collecting and deploying some of the most recognizable characters from Tolkien’s canon, as a group of champions sent back in time to set things right.

“A lot of what we were inspired by, being kids in the late ’70s, early ’80s, growing up with toys and playing in the backyard with action figures — it’s a lot of the same thing,” Ambrosini said. “That’s what we’re trying to emulate there. You have a lovingly crafted figure that you truly believe is a representation of Frodo of Strider. And then you’re with your friends, and you’re like, Yeah, what if Sauron was there? A lot of it is sitting and recreating those moments of playing with your toys.

The channel for that, narratively, is that the player “discovers a ring like no other,” Reinhart said in a media presentation last week. “And this ring allows players to bridge time and space by bringing characters of different ages together to build incredible what ifstyle squads, mixing and matching characters that have never been together before.

Besides these what-if team-ups, The Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-earth will delve into alternate timelines and envision scenarios fans have long wondered about: what if, say, Galadriel had accepted the One Ring from Frodo and become the dark queen she feared? “We’re going to explore these questions authentically, with our players,” said Ambrosini. “We’re excited to take the literature and present it in new and exciting ways.”

Grid view

Heroes of Middle-earth has been in development for over two years. Reinhart admitted that the game was born out of business decisions — while Capital Games looked for its next project, Reinhart said, the studio asked what other fandoms could be served by something like Galaxy of heroes. But instead of skinning Galaxy of heroes units in Lord of the Rings costumes and shipping those, the designers at Capital Games knew they had to start with a story that justifies why an eclectic cast of characters could recreate ancient battles.

Here’s how you get the opening scene: Strider (Aragorn) and Frodo reach Weathertop on their journey to Rivendell with the rest of the Hobbits. They encounter Nazgûl in a battle tutorial, the two characters are unlocked for the player to use, and they make their way to Rivendell.

But along the way, players have to recognize themes from Under the spell of the ring: the company of the ringReinhart said. Aragorn is a tank-like unit that draws the attack towards itself and away from the Hobbits. When he takes a critical hit, all Hobbits with him go into a stealth mode that both distracts and deals damage to the opponent while limiting their own exposure.

“You would never imagine Frodo being front and center [and] be like, Hit me‘ explained Ambrosini, ‘while on the other hand you get Sam[wise Gamgee]coming in and very soon, he’ll throw an apple at someone’s head and say, Hi! Here, big guy!”

Image: EA Capital Games/Electronic Arts

For example, the Riders of Rohan are another unit among the 46 characters that can be unlocked on launch day. It was clear that Capital could not launch a full cavalry charge Heroes of Middle-earth, whose squads consist of four units. Instead, the Knights of Rohan are represented in teamwork attacks; one shown to the media involved a rider throwing a sword at a companion who catches it in mid stride to deliver the blow.

Asked if the free-to-play game would follow a seasonal or battle pass model of unlockable content, Ambrosini hedged. “There will be multiple timelines; we work closely with Middle-earth Enterprises [the licensing authority for the Lord of the Rings franchise] on it,” he said.

Still, Reinhart, Ambrosini and the rest of Capital Games are aware of the risk of a rapid explosion of mobile games, especially licensed games. That is to say: a free-to-play game launches on mobile platforms, has a lot of interest and attention for the first few months, then seems to fade from mainstream consciousness once the original content has been exhausted.

Heroes of Middle-earthThe creators of ‘s have a full year’s worth of post-launch content in mind, Reinhart said. It features missions and encounters across three campaigns: Light, Shadow, and Guild, the latter starting with a raid mission in the Mines of Moria.

“Live [service] games are a dance,” Reinhart said. “You must have planned that dance. We said in our presentation that we have a year’s worth of content on our roadmap that specifically addresses this issue. We time them, try to make sure we do the right thing by the players – are you giving them the right cadence of things? – but also to make sure we take the right time to develop something in relation to how they want to play the game.

Reinhart emphasized that this is all connected in a single experience, narratively speaking, as opposed to a menu of isolated missions that have nothing to do with each other. “Each of these is a different story that needs to be told within a single concept,” he said, “which is essentially we have a shadowy figure trying to disrupt these storylines, and then you come in with your heroes that you collected to correct that mistake so that the storylines match at the end.”

Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-earth launched on Wednesday, May 10 and is available for iOS and Android devices through the App Store and Google Play.