After spending quite a while in Closed Beta Gwent: The Witcher Card Game is just about ready to open its doors to everyone. The free Open Beta will begin next week, on May 24th, and will be available for both the PC and consoles. As for the Closed Beta, it will be shutting down on May 22nd in order to give the developers enough time to work out any kinks before the floodgates truly open.

If your only experience with Gwent comes from The Witcher 3, or if you've never even heard of it but you're interested in adding a new card game to your repertoire, you'll find my early review of the Closed Beta version over here. Long story short, "Gwent might currently be in an early Closed Beta state, but even now it is a vastly superior version of The Witcher 3's minigame. The balance is tighter, there are more viable cards with which you can craft decks, and the card abilities themselves have been greatly redesigned to offer a much more strategic experience." I've been playing it on and off for the past few months and it has definitely managed to hold my attention, so if you're a fan of cards games I'd suggest you at least give it a look.

And for those of you that are currently in the Closed Beta, I have some very good news! As a 'small reward' for helping Gwent become better CD Projekt Red will be giving out a whole bunch of Kegs (card packs) and promotional material to everyone that participated in the Closed Beta. Here's the full list of goodies:

• Every Card Keg you purchased — we will return you the amount of Kegs you bought with real money.

• Card Kegs for Player Levels — starting from level 5, you get 2 Kegs every 5 levels.

• Card Kegs for your rank — 2 Kegs for each rank.

• All end-season rewards. 

• All items granted as gifts from CD PROJEKT RED (like the gift premium Geralt card).

You can learn more about Gwent and how its played by heading over to the official website. As for the download link, I have a feeling it will only become publicly available once the Open Beta begins next week. And finally, if you would like to check out all of the cards and some of the most popular decks you can find what you seek over at GwentDB. Enjoy!