Game director Naoki Hamaguchi says Queen’s Blood is “not just a card game that one could engage with”, but the centerpiece of an entire questline.

There’s no shortage of reasons to be excited about Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth ahead of its imminent launch, and its sizeable and varied roster of minigames is surely high on that list. From playing the piano to chocobo racing, from Fort Condor to G-Bike, the upcoming action RPG boasts an impressive amount of optional minigames for players to engage with- but in the lead up to its release, none have caught the eye the way Queen’s Blood has.

Inspired by The Witcher 3’s Gwent, Queen’s Blood is a card collection and battle minigame that spans the entire experience, seeing you battle a number of different players scattered throughout the world, collecting cards, and building increasingly powerful decks. But according to Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s game director Naoki Hamaguchi, it’s much more than that.

Speaking in a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Hamaguchi revealed that on top of being an entire CCG in and of itself, Queen’s Blood will also be the centerpiece of an optional story-driven questline in the game, which will explain the card game’s history and its place in the world of FF7.

“Within our dev team, there were numerous members that were very much hardcore card game fans,” he said. “We formed this group where we could discuss the rules and how to develop Queen’s Blood. I think we were able to create something that is going to be very satisfying to fans of card games. It sort of presents, within Rebirth, [something] that’s not just a card game that one could engage with, but there’s actually an entire storyline that’s developed around Queen’s Blood, and we can go into the backstory of how this card game came to be, the history and what kind of role does it take in this world of Final Fantasy 7.”

Queen’s Blood was one of several points that we praised in our review of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, where we awarded it a score of 10/10, saying, “The promise of those old, grand, globe-trotting Final Fantasy epics from the series’ 16- and 32-bit heyday in AAA form has been fulfilled at last. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth finally realizes the series’ central, implicit potential, looking to the past to pave the way for hopefully the start of a new golden age for the series.” You can read the full review through here.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth launches for PlayStation 5 on February 29.