Shards of Order is the Dark RPG Card Game You Need to Try
Nearly a year after working with Awakened Realms on their incredibly positive, Elder-Scrolls inspired RPG Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon, we received an email asking us to received a mysterious package. Naturally, we were all ears - and thus, the collectors edition of Shards of Order arrived; a game by Fardust Studios, a small team backed by Awakened Realms.
The collectors edition of Shards of Order came in some fancy packaging, designed after “Linnaeus’ Journal”, with a plethora of items that introduced you to the world, and the lore of the game - honestly, this was one of the best collectors editions we’d ever been sent - coming from a tiny studio, this took us by surprise. There was a set of tarot cards, a standee display featuring some of the characters in the game, collectible pins, a treasure map detailing the world and all it has to offer, character cards and stickers, an overview of the game and a signed letter from the team. Oh, and a few thousand tiny bits of squiggly cardboard that escaped onto our studio floor.
Naturally these don’t define the quality of the game itself; but the dedication to their game and their community was a really great sign, before learning anything about the gameplay itself - and we’ll proudly have all of these collectibles on display for the foreseeable future.
So… How Does it Play?
The synopsis, taken straight from their Very Positive Steam page, is “A grim RPG with card-based combat where nothing stays dead. Lead a party of survivors through a world undone by shattered Laws. Restore them and reshape the rules of the game, but be ready to face the consequences”. In the sake of transparency, card-based game have never been our forte - the closest we’ve ever gotten to that world is Pokémon or Yu-Gi-Oh. But alas, Shards of Order does something rather unique that made the first few ours of the game quiet captivating; it blends time-based combat mechanics with luck-of-the-draw elements, set in a world that seems reminiscent of Dark Souls, Bloodborne and Elden Ring.
The opening battles are quite straightforward, introducing you to the gameplay mechanics and the characters. You build a small team and take on creepy-looking foes, with each ‘card’ played taking up a specific amount time. This forces you think about your next move, strategically planning your entire combat sequence as opposed to simply hoping a decent card will appear at the top of the deck.
You then combine the combat and the gameplay mechanics with an elaborate skill tree that extends across all characters, and a variety of upgrades to your team and gear as you continue to explore and gain experience in the world. Not only was the gameplay easy to pick up, but as we started to sink tens of hours into the campaign, we found ourselves immersed in the lore that was ever-present, heavily invested in the characters and the narrative from start to finish.
The Issues
Despite a fun gameplay mechanic and endless lore, Shards of Order has some issues that should be addressed to make it a little more approachable. The biggest pain point is the UI - it’s functional, but the main menu in particular is quite complex, with icons signifying a multitude of tabs and elements that don’t make much sense to those who haven’t sunk 10-20 hours into the game.
The artwork is beautiful, but there’s far too much variety. Some characters and enemies are beautifully rendered with incredible detail, while others feel like placeholders with gradients for clothing. When compared to the card designs in particular, you end up with a contrast of three very different art styles that contrast with each other.
Some of the more advanced techniques in the game take a while to set up and prepare for. However, you’ve often ended the fight long before being given an chance to bust out the powerful move, or fully prepare everything you need.
Finally, there’s a mix of voice-acted scenes and characters throughout the game, but they’re quite sporadic - we’d personally love to see some community voices fill the gaps where voice work jst isn’t present, particularly for some of the lore segments that would benefit from a narrator.
The Community & Final Thoughts
A few thing that stood out to us as we played through the game and admired this beautiful creation that Fardust have put together, is how open they are to bringing in fans who aren’t particularly familiar with the card-based genre, how delightfully distant they are from a ‘Roguelike’ formula, and how engaged they are with their community via Steam. If you take a peek through the discussions and news pages, you’ll find that community feedback has helped shape the game into what it is today, with polls on features, and suggestions for things as minor as cosmetics. The team genuinely cares about the future of the game, in addition to what makes this one so special.
Going forward, we’re excited to see where Fardust takes the game. We’d like to see a little more polish and a few minor tweaks to make the gameplay experience cleaner, but in terms of everything that makes a game - and potentially a franchise - incredibly popular with a community, they’ve nailed the formula. The lore is wonderful and highly detailed, the characters are interesting and the gameplay loop is fun and challenging.