Tabletop "living card game" Android: Netrunner, long a passion of video game developers and writers alike, is being adapted by Legacy Games into a free-to-play mobile role-playing game with the help of 80 Days and Samsara writer Meg Jayanth.
It's interesting to see a studio drawing thematic inspiration from Netrunner to make a single-player game, as the tabletop game is often cited by developers as a standout example of competitive game design.
Jayanth's involvement makes it doubly intriguing, as her work as lead writer on 80 Days helped developer Inkle earn an award for Best Narrative at this year's IGF.
Legacy Games' Jamar Graham explained this new project to GamesBeat at the GamesBeat Summit last week as an attempt to "use the world and the art" of Netrunner to create "an action-RPG like Diablo or the new Star: Wars Uprising."
Jayanth is expected to help consult on the game's narrative direction and write the basic story outline. Legacy Games, a division of Legacy Entertainment with a mobile game catalog that includes titles like Crayola Bubbles and Murder, She Wrote 2, aims to release this Netrunner game sometime next year.
Update: A Legacy Games representative gave the following statement to Gamasutra in order to make the differences between the studio's mobile F2P RPG and Fantasy Flight's Android: Netrunner card game extremely clear.
"While the game that we're currently developing takes place in the Android Universe, our game has no connection whatsoever to the Android: Netrunner card game. Our game is not a port, recreation or reimagining of Android: Netrunner but instead, features completely unique gameplay that includes some characters and locations from the Android Universe’s extensive lore, which includes board games, novels, and the recently announced “Worlds of Android” art and background book. We want to make sure that no one has the impression that Legacy is making a mobile version of Android: Netrunner, because that is inaccurate."