The Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-earth is Electronic Arts’ next big licensed title for mobile platforms, the publisher announced on Monday. Billed as a “collectible role-playing game” it will begin a limited, regional beta test this summer.
The Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-earth will be developed by EA Capital Games, based in Sacramento, California. That’s the studio responsible for Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, an enormously successful mobile collectible RPG, which launched in November 2015.
A news release from EA said Heroes of Middle-earth will involve turn-based combat and “a wide roster of characters from across the vast universe of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.” Malachi Boyle, EA’s vice president for mobile RPGs, said the game will also feature “high-fidelity graphics, cinematic animations, and stylized art.”
The statement also said that Heroes of Middle-earth is “the first mobile game developed by EA, inspired by storylines, locations, characters, and lore from The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit literary works.”
Electronic Arts has published Middle-earth games under license going back to 2002’s The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, though that license was to adapt the Peter Jackson films of the day, and not the J.R.R. Tolkien literary works specifically. EA’s last Middle-earth game was 2009’s The Lord of the Rings: Conquest, for Nintendo DS, PlayStation 3, Windows PC, and Xbox 360.
As far as mobile titles, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment has published five of the last six Middle-earth games for Android and iOS, although Glu Mobile — acquired by Electronic Arts in 2021 — developed and published 2010’s tower-defense title The Lord of the Rings: Middle-earth Defense. Before that, Jamdat Mobile published eight LOTR adaptations for phones; Jamdat was acquired by Electronic Arts in 2006.