Shardbound

by Richard Jul 25, 2017 | 1 Votes | 0 Played | 0 Reviews

10 rate

Genres:

Strategy , MMO

Graphics:

Labels:

Turn Based

Platforms:

Experience a hybrid gameplay of card game and strategy in this new MMO. Play as one of the heroes of Shardbound and defeat your opponents with your array of minions and spells. Collect and customize your deck to build your own custom army and challenge other players to see who has the best deck in town. Play Now Similar Games

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Summary Plotline Gameplay Community Graphics/ Sound Conclusion

Summary

Shardbound is a tactical card game where it combines the gameplay mechanics of a turn-based strategy game and tradable card game. You use your deck to summon your minions on the field and defeat the opposing hero to win, you can build your own deck from the cards that you obtain from battles or use a pre-build deck that offered different themes and playstyle. You can also compete with other players in rank battles in hopes of becoming the best player.

Plotline

Shardbound takes place in a fantasy world where a great land rush has begun, as shards from the broken world have started to fall from the city, causing chaos to other regions. People started to evacuate, while some started to revolt to overthrow the kingdoms, now as one of the heroes of Shardbound, it is time to build your Noble House and reclaim what was lost to you.

Gameplay

The exciting part of Shardbound is the mix style of gameplay, it features the fun game mechanics of the turn-based tactical game and the tradable card game. This adds more replay ability and collectible aspects that will hook more players into investing more time in Shardbound.

When starting off in the game, there are no create a new character or hero, meaning there is no custom avatar for players to pick. What it does it that it will put players in a set of short prologue missions to help introduce the game and its story. Each of the prologue mission provides some simple guides on the basics of the game and the missions provide some narrative on the plot of the game and some proper introductions to some of the heroes in the game. Once you complete the missions, you will be rewarded with new cards to use for your deck. Now once you complete all of the prologue missions, you can now proceed to the main part of the game.

Playing the game is quite easy even if a player has not tried any card game or strategy game. Each players has a deck with 60 cards and they start off by drawing three cards at the beginning, and each new turn they can draw a new card. To summon minions, you need to have Mana, and each turn Mana will be restored and the maximum amount that you can carry will increase cumulatively. Your Hero will be available in the field at the start of the battle, possessing attack and health points and a special ability that can be activated by consuming Mana, and only one Hero card is available to any deck, these have different abilities and stats that will have a different effect depending on how you play your cards right. However if your Hero dies on the field, you lose the battle as the main objective in Shardbound is to defeat the opposing Hero.

There are different types of cards as some can compose of minions, while others can be spells and attachments. Minions work like Heroes that have an attack and health points, except you won’t lose the battle if they die. They can have different abilities that can be triggered when summoned, killed or activated by spending a Mana. Spells are consumed after being used and they can provide status effects or damage in the field.

Combat has some complexity but easy to remember. Melee units can only attack enemies that are adjacent and both parties will receive damage regardless of who attack first. Range units can deal damage from afar but cannot retaliate when attack unlike in Melee units and they cannot attack units that were blocked by another enemy unit from the line of sight. There are also higher grounds that can provide damage boost to some units and some units have limited movement when traversing from low ground to high ground. Some obstacles can be used to avoid attacks from range units and these can be destroyed to reveal a new pathway for ambushes.

You can customize your deck with the new cards that you acquire from battles or quest achievements. You can also earn credits by winning in matches that you can use to purchase booster packs, unfortunately after opening a booster pack that reveals three random cards, you can only pick one to keep. There are different themed decks that you can try at the start, each with different play styles that you can experiment on. You can also customize any existing decks and add any new cards that will add better effects to the current deck.

Community

Though the game is still on its Alpha phase, there are quite a handful of active players testing the game. Players can compete against one another in the rank battles to see which player can be the best or challenge players casually in unrank battles. Hopefully more multiplayer game modes can be added to add more depth and variety to the game.

Graphics/ Sound

Shardbound features some incredible visuals, and despite still in its early development, the character designs are amazing. The characters feature unique personalities and animation that makes them standout from each other. The environment are also well designed. The audio department features voiced dialogues when controlling units that brings life into them, the music tracks feature some great fantasy and futuristic theme to add more depth to the experience.

Conclusion

Despite still on its alpha phase, Shardbound features a refreshing gameplay that provides a ton of replay value to any fans of card game or strategy game. It still lacks any other game modes for variety, the game still provides a fun competitive mode to keep the players busy. Hopefully Shardbound would have more content in the future that would entice newcomers and card game veterans.