PAX: The Mageseeker, the newest League of Legends spin-off, puts magic in the spotlight
The Mageseeker
Over the past few years, the League of Legends community has grown exponentially. The canon of Runeterra continues expanding thanks to shows like Arcane and spin-offs like Ruined King. After that, Digital Sun receives a piece of the universe from The Mageseeker: A League of Legends Story. The developers at Digital Sun, who brought us the shady action RPG Moonlighter in 2018, apply their skills to the League universe, this time concentrating on the game’s champion, Sylas. It should come as no surprise that Mageseeker is successful, given the RPG origins of the MOBA genre and Digital Sun’s track record of producing high-quality action-RPGs. What struck me most about the demo I played at PAX East 2023 was how well it works and how hard the studio is working to create a tight, action-packed but magic-focused game.
It’s like sorcery, in a way
Mageseeker is the newest collaboration between Riot Forge and an outside developer to publish games in the studio’s canon. The Moonlighter team challenged Sylas in this contest despite not intending to do so at the outset. Josep Bao, an animator and cutscene supervisor, told me that Riot contacted Digital Sun following the launch of Moonlighter. Studio brainstorming sessions produced several concepts, including a man with the ability to take magic. It turned out that Sylas’s discharge was imminent.
Sylas is a mage who can steal and use the ultimate powers of other champions in League of Legends, a game I played a little while after his introduction. Mageseeker delves further into Sylas’ backstory to provide Digital Sun’s perspective on the matter. My demo’s opening cutscene gave me a brief glimpse into Sylas’s history, showing him using his magical sense to track down and kill mages across the kingdom of Demacia before having a change of heart and defending one, which landed him in prison as a mage.
