Shards of Order Review

Polish monolith of the board gaming scene, Awaken Realms, has been making recent efforts to curate a catalogue of video games that draw on the tabletop medium they’ve so successfully broken into with This War of Mine and Nemesis. Their biggest title has been the Skyrim-like Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon, and things continue to look positive with the recent release of Shards of Order. This is an original IP created by Fardust, a team that has previously digitally adapted Awaken Realms’ deckbuilding game Dragon Eclipse. Shards of Order is similarly a deckbuilding title, of which there is no shortage in the current video game market. So what makes Shards of Order stand out from the likes of genre leaders Slay The Spire and Monster Train, and should you care? 

Shards of Order begins with the player controlling an amnesiac legionnaire left for dead in a doomed dark fantasy world. The passage of time has ceased; the great bell that marks it has been broken. An inner monologue taunts our protagonist, warning of their cruel manner and abhorrent acts that can no longer be recalled. In their escape from the cavernous grave they’ve awoken in and egress into the larger world, the player will recruit an archer and a mage to round out a versatile party of three forced together out of desperation. Other characters encountered on this journey are positively unusual, warped by the gloom of the grimdark setting and a plague that sees all living creatures unable to die without coming back somewhat twisted. 

This is a story-forward deckbuilding game that also features light elements of exploration and roleplay decisions uncommon in the genre. The player moves the protagonist around nodes indicating connected points of interest during exploration. Locations contain people and objects that can be interacted with, triggering story events, as well as combat encounters. Dialogue and story text are palatable and relatively short form, always complementing the experience and never getting in the way. Text scrolls out along the right side of the screen in the modern, top-down roleplaying game fashion. The game welcomes players’ curiosity about this setting and its eccentric characters, with decisions seldom punishing the player for their ignorance. Every choice will see some measure of reward, progress, and a minor feeling of investment in what is playing out. Despite a runtime of about 15 hours, Shards of Order manages to be full of side quests and decision points that never bloat the experience or disrupt the pacing. Shards of Order effectively manages a perfect flow between its various genres, bolstered by an altogether tight and challenging deckbuilding combat campaign. 

Anyone who has played a deckbuilding game in the last decade will recognise much of the genre literacy on display. Shards of Order cardplay is initially straightforward. All three characters engage in combat together, with each having a unique suite of cards that are shuffled together into a deck. Players draw from their deck a hand of cards, which will determine things like attacks, defence points, buffs and offensive debuffs. The main cost to playing a card is measured in time. Shards of Order’s most interesting innovation in the deckbuilding battler space is that every enemy on the 2D battlefield will telegraph their pre-programmed attack, the space in the arena it is destined for, and the time (in card costs and actions) until this action will be resolved. Playing a card such as a one-cost Slash will progress the battle timer, bringing all ticking-down resolutions forward by one. An enemy might have a devastating blow lined up with a timer of four, letting the player consider how their next few cards might mitigate this before the attack commences. This is a highly tactical battle system that has players thoroughly analyse their current hand, the state of the battle, character formations, and sometimes as many as six or more highly varied foes ready to wipe you out. There are no filler fights in this game; each battle is specifically curated to eke out the maximum challenge that the player is equipped for at that point in the game. I don’t think there was a battle in the game that didn’t actively engage me. Even better, if a fight goes south and seems unwinnable, the player can always summon the aid of an eye in the sky — a mysterious god that can restore the team to full health once per fight while also having unpredictable side effects. 

Battles reward experience, and as characters level up, skill points are then spent on unlocking new cards for deckbuilding or upgrading existing ones. I tried to keep my deck under 35 cards throughout the game, leaving many more aside for deck alterations. Quests and character interactions also offer new cards to the player, often themed accordingly, such as food rations represented in a card that buffs the party. 

Unfortunately, the player never knows what strategies they should plan for before being introduced to a new fight. Some fights in the back half require more versatility than damage output. This means some fights are initially fought with unviable decks, playing to an inevitable party wipe or surrender. Fortunately, death is but a trivial inconvenience in this game, reviving the party at a nearby bonfire with full health. Players can easily try again with an adjusted deck that accommodates learnings from the failed fight. Heck, not every fight can or needs to be resolved with bloodshed either. Shards of Order occasionally puts its story before or even inside of its battles, with encounters that can consist of something as delightfully menial as a staring contest. 

Despite being a deckbuilding game that lightly breaches into narrative and roleplaying territory, Farscape seem to have gotten little wrong in this modest budget title. Across my 18 hours, the only issues I encountered were the occasional bug (that was often in my favour) and poor controller implementation. 

This is a game that I’ve attempted to enjoy on my TV using both an Xbox controller and a DualSense. Several issues arose. The most obvious of these is problematic input recognition. Switching between characters and cards in hand often requires several repeated inputs, oftentimes making illogical selections on my behalf, which can lead to accidental card plays that can’t be unwound. Most unforgivable, though, is the inability to consistently highlight and read crucial information on forecast enemy attacks and status effects. Hovering over a character or enemy prompts a button to open a vertical column boxout with information on everything affecting them, which can be several different buffs and ailments. The explanation boxout is ample and clear, but quickly runs off of the screen with no way to scroll down to the hidden, pertinent details obscured below. This isn’t an issue with the mouse cursor that can simply hover over each status icon. 

The aforementioned bugs are few and far between, and are unlikely to cause players much strife beyond being the rare inconvenience. Card logic sometimes played out in unexpected, contradictory ways in late-game fights where many card effects are resolving contradictory positive and negative effects. Altogether, though, Shards of Order never crashed or came to a standstill. My final boss was invincible (undefeatable) until after launch, but Fardust have been cranking out the hotfixes, and this was soon addressed. The level of polish on this sub-$15, fully fleshed out deckbuilding title is otherwise remarkable. 

Final Thoughts

Fardust’s second foray into the computer deckbuilding space is nothing short of impressive. It has the perfect scope, telling an apocalyptic fantasy tale that never buckles. Its decision space is light and interesting. Its forward momentum prevents the player from feeling that they need to roll back choices. The deckbuilding gameplay is familiar overall, but its core time-cost gameplay adds a chess-like tactical quality that is deeply addictive. Fights never tire, with plenty of enemies and card strategies available to keep things fresh across the game’s 15-odd hours. Shards of Order feels like a complete meal with enough variety to sustain its runtime, yet its worldbuilding and mechanics left me wanting more. I hope we see more from this property in the future, whether crossing to the tabletop or in a digital follow-up.