Trading card game Yu-Gi-Oh! has been around since 1999 and Konami has been putting out video games versions of the TCG for just as long. So why is the free-to-play Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel, released with little fanfare last week, hitting so hard there are a couple hundred thousand people playing it on Steam at any given time? It’s because Master Duel is the right game at exactly the right moment.
No one saw Master Duel coming. This streamlined, anime and manga free version of the venerable card game was announced in July of last year along with two other Yu-Gi-Oh! games, the fast-paced Rush Duel for the Nintendo Switch and four-player mobile battler Cross Duel. A relatively bare bones, straightforward recreation of the card game seemed the least interesting of the three, so I wasn’t expecting much of Master Duel. Now, a week…
