Origins TCG's first big demo update: new UI, test packs, ranked at Next Fest and the Crimson Cup card list

What changes in the demo

The team calls it "the first big update to the Origins demo", and the word first suggests more will follow before the festival.

A new interface and board

The screens around the match have been upgraded and the game board has a new look.

A collectors tutorial

It explains the key aspects of collecting, the side that sets Origins apart from other digital card games: cards you open, own and trade. Our collector economy guide goes through the model step by step.

Test packs

Packs to open inside the demo, to try the collecting side of the game before the full launch.

New voice lines

The update adds new voice lines; the announcement says nothing more about them.

Balance changes

The details came out the same evening, in the Steam post and on Discord: Dorothy drops to 4 mana, eight cards change stats, Itsy Bitsy Spider turns Evil, six cards change what they do, and two game rules and The Gallows location are fixed. Everything is in the patch notes article, and already in MetaShifting and in the balance history of every card it touches.

Ranked mode opens with Steam Next Fest

The team will turn ranked mode on "with the start of Steam Next Fest", with exclusive ranked rewards whose details have not been announced. The festival runs from Monday 19 October 2026 at 10:00 Pacific time to Monday 26 October. When the ladder opens to everyone, OriginsMeta's first real tier list starts too, built on the results.

The Crimson Cup card list is in the game

The update also carries the tentative card list of the Crimson Cup, the biggest tournament Koin Games has run so far, from 20 to 25 October: regional qualifiers on the 20th, 21st and 22nd, then playoffs and finals, in the Conquest format, best of three, with a best-of-five grand final. The prizes are worth 10,000 dollars in total, between cash, promo cards, packs and Alpha Edition boxes: it is not a cash prize pool.

"Barring upcoming balance patches, you can start cooking decks for the tournament", the team writes. Two tools to start with:

• the deck builder, whose tournament mode checks the Conquest rules while you build;
• the Steam Next Fest guide, with dates, times and how to sign up on Discord.

Progress: what you keep

This was the question left open. On 16 September a staff message on Discord had confirmed that deck unlocks and boss progress would move from Demo 1 to Demo 2, but it said nothing about the closed playtest. Now the team is explicit: whoever played the demo, the playtest or both keeps the progress of whichever is further ahead, "so no one will have to unlock cards again".

It matters because unlocking is slow. In the playtest every deck opens after three ranked wins plus a win against an AI boss, the path players had called punishing in the feedback of 14 September.

And the playtest?

Whoever plays the closed playtest gets no new decks, cards or bosses with this update. The polish part reaches the playtest later this week, together with other changes the team wants to test with players: anyone grinding ranked matches there will have to wait a few days.

What we don't know yet

• What the exclusive ranked rewards are.
• Whether deckbuilding is already open to everyone in the public demo: the announcement does not say.

Update, 22 September: two questions are answered. The balance details are out (patch notes), and the announcement is now on Steam too, where it was published at 21:59 UTC on 21 September.

The rumour that got it right

Last week a line went around on social media about a "Demo Season 2" coming the following week, with new decks, new rewards and a first taste of collecting. We reported it as a rumour, because no official post confirmed it. The timing and the collecting part turned out to be right.