League of Legends is now a puzzle game

The latter started as a mini game and spawned a new style of strategy games that’s turned into one of the hottest game genres of 2019. In light of this increased competition, Tencent may be looking for new ways of capitalizing on one of its most valuable properties.

League of Legends is still huge, but its popularity is declining. The game pulled in $1.4 billion in 2018, but that was down 21% from the previous year. But 24.7% of all core PC gamers in the world still play the game. One Newzoo analyst told Reuters that Riot Games “badly needs a new way to monetize the game.”As a new means of monetization, Fingertip Summoner feels like quite a solid effort, even without being its own separate app. The match-3 puzzle game mechanic is inherently addictive, though. (Consider the fact that millions of people still play Candy Crush.) As another typical puzzle game, it’s hard to not have some fun playing the game, even when it feels meaningless.

But Fingertip Summoner has a surprising amount of intent behind it. That’s what makes the game effective. It does a good job of incorporating many of the beloved League of Legends characters and merging their skills and abilities with the match-3 puzzle game mechanic.

That said, this isn’t really an innovative game. RPG match-3 games are a dime a dozen these days. But if we had to have a League of Legends puzzle game, at least it’s a thoughtful one.

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