If you didn't get a chance to play League of Legends' Demacia Rising minigame, now you can

Demacia Rising was, in theory, the perfect League of Legends minigame for me. Part turn-based strategy game part city builder, it followed a young Lux on her adventures in the eponymous Demacia. It acted as a great little lore dump, giving you some info on both the blue and gold city and the constant, impending threat of Noxus. As you progressed you built up your army, conquered settlements, and set about expanding out Demacia's territory. You had to balance your resources and manage your time in order to optimize the city's growth, while simultaneously crushing anyone who stood in your way.

Things, however, didn't go that smoothly. Compared to the visual novel feel of Spirit Blossom, the fighting game-esque Soul Fighter, and even the Arcane mini-RPG, Jinx Fixes Everything, Demacia Rising is notably complex. It has a lot more moving parts, and subsequently its League of Legends debut was ruined by a swarm of technical problems.

The minigame was disabled for around two days when it first launched as, to borrow the words of Director of Product Drew 'just a capybara' Levin, "EUW [was] on fire." Issues with saving persisted well into the season, and while things eventually became stable, it certainly took quite a while.

You'd be forgiven, then, for missing out on playing it. I managed to wrap back around to it just before it cycled out, and honestly, it gave me a much-needed burst of Might and Magic-eqsue nostalgia. If you did miss out on it, though, I've got some good news: it's now fully playable via the official LoL Wiki.

When you head over to Demacia Rising's wiki page, the game is available under the 'Minigame' header. It has both chapters (The Founding of Demacia and Threats From Beyond), and the full music and voice acting. It's also fully playable in your browser - no weird, suspicious downloads here.

The wiki does note, however, that the game does require "several MB of data," and therefore it's "not recommended for slow connections." I don't expect it'll be the perfect new phone game, then, but it worked perfectly fine on my rusty ol' work laptop. You can try it out here.

As someone who loves League of Legends' lore, Demacia Rising is easily one of my favorite minigames to date. I have the Lux comics from 2019 sitting on my bookshelf, and every now and then I find myself dipping back into them for pure, happy nostalgia purposes. As Riot's seasonal model continues to drip feed new lore and tell new stories (even if it is rewriting some older ones), I love that its minigames are finally exploring Runeterra's extensive history.

I still love the less serious games, though. In a shock to no one, I adored the Spirit Blossom dating sim, and I enjoyed the fighting game feel of Soul Fighter, even if it did feel like a testing ground for 2XKO. And before you ask, yes, I romanced Thresh. Of course I did. Haters gonna hate.