Shard Squad

[b]Review snapshot[/b] Reviewed on: 7 June 2026 Achievements available at time of review: 69 [b]Quick completionist overview[/b] A great Bullet Heaven game in which you make a team of creatures to tackle each new stage. While grinding for resources for meta progression. Completion takes around 25h, the game has no missable achievements. [b]Achievement overview[/b] [b]Approximate time to 100%:[/b] Around 25 hours [b]Estimated achievement difficulty:[/b] 3/10 [b]Minimum number of playthroughs needed:[/b] It is a roguelite; you'll play all the stages several times [b]Is there a good guide available:[/b] Yes, [url=https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3687058585]here is a guide[/url] for unlocking all the relics, and [url=https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3604954518]this guide[/url] will explain how to unlock the last character after beating the game. [b]Multiplayer achievements:[/b] No [b]Missable achievements:[/b] No [b]Grinding achievements:[/b] Yes, to unlock all the relics, you have to spend over 50,000 coins on recipes; this is a huge grind. [b]DLC-only achievements:[/b] No [b]Speedrun achievements:[/b] No [b]Time-gated achievements:[/b] No [b]RNG achievements:[/b] No [b]Does difficulty affect achievements:[/b] No [b]Unobtainable/glitched achievements:[/b] No [b]Gamepad or mouse and keyboard:[/b] I preferred to play with a controller [b]About the game[/b] In Shard Squad, you play as a character who tries to find his missing friends. However, the story isn't the main focus; this game is all about the Bullet Heaven gameplay. In some way, it is your typical Bullet Heaven, where you start off weak and unlock resources with each run to get stronger. However, there are quite a few things that make this game unique. In each level, you not only have the hordes of enemies to kill and bosses that will spawn and you need to defeat, but there are also orbs. If you kill those, you get an upgrade for that run, and there are challenges. In each level, you will find a few different challenges. Those pop up during the run and will tell you how to complete them at that moment. What I love about Shard Squad is how you unlock new characters and relics. You have to do something special to unlock each of them, and it was quite addictive to try and combine as much as possible to unlock a bunch of stuff each run. You can unlock them one by one if you don't want to bother trying to find the combos to unlock a bunch; however, for me, that is where the fun was, figuring out how to unlock multiple at the same time. The only downside I found in Shard Squad is that the screen can get quite busy with all the different attacks. And with how colorful the screens are, and with your team members and enemies being very colorful, it can be an overload of info. However, there are options in the menu to add more transparency to your team members and their effects. [b]About the achievements[/b] None of the achievements are missable. Most of the achievements are for unlocking each character. And a bunch of others are for having a full team + a specific relic equipped to get the maximum bonus in a specific type, for example, the fire trait or the Magical Girls trait. There are also achievements for just unlocking everything, all the stories, all the characters, and all the relics. The one where you have to spend 50k coins on recipes will take quite a while to grind. So choose many "chest" rewards while playing through the levels, which give you 500 coins. [b]Final thoughts[/b] I enjoyed Shard Squad a lot! As stated above, I loved figuring out ways to unlock a bunch of stuff in the same run. Trying to optimize a run. Which sometimes failed, but most of the time worked out in my favor. [b]I give Shard Squad 4 out of 5 stars[/b]. [code]Do you enjoy games that don't have missable achievements? Check out this list on my website: [url=https://www.missitheachievementhuntress.com/games-with-unmissable-achievements/]Missi the Achievement Huntress: Games without missable achievements[/url][/code]

I adore the designs, but the gameplay is just not for me. Though I will say that I would've tolerated it more if I knew that I bought the whole game (there are some characters locked behind a paid dlc, and you will be reminded of it on the title screen every time)

This is one of the more refreshing takes on the bullet heaven genre. If youre familiar with Vampire Survivor or other games in this genre, you'll know what youre getting into. However, Shard Squad stands out with a few nice mechanics. The game allows you to toggle the auto aim allowing for more precise and intentful attacks. Something I wish VS uses. For creature collecter fans, there's a nice spread of characters with unique attacks and assigned traits which allow for fun team comps if you utilize the traits fully. There's fun little mini games mid missions such as basketball, surfing, and new objectives. Lastly, the newly introduced evolution system really makes the characters shine and firmly places this game as one of the better and unique bullet heaven games.

Do you like adorable creatures? Do you like lots of unlocks and collectables? Do you like challenging progression that's still fun? Then Shard Squad is an absolute no brainer! The small 'squad' of devs are clearly dedicated not only to delivering an enjoyable experience fresh out of the box, but consistently releasing new content through DLC or even totally free updates (Prime Evolution was MASSIVE) to keep you coming back. Pros: Creative creature designs with a gorgeous pixel art style Lots of diversity in builds (squad members, relics, recipes) Satisfying progression Dedicated devs Cons: Somewhat slow start in the first 30 mins Lack of music options No online multiplayer built in (3rd Party is said to work well) To wrap up, its really cute and has a ton of heart. The lore mentioned in the world building is really exciting and I'd love to see a story based adventure with the Shards! ~~~~~~~Peço desculpas pelo uso do Google Tradutor ~~~~~~~ Você gosta de criaturas adoráveis? Gosta de muitos itens desbloqueáveis ​​e colecionáveis? Gosta de uma progressão desafiadora, mas que continua sendo divertida? Então, escolher Shard Squad é uma decisão óbvia! A pequena equipe de desenvolvedores é claramente dedicada não apenas a oferecer uma experiência agradável logo de cara, mas também a lançar constantemente novos conteúdos — seja via DLC ou atualizações totalmente gratuitas (a *Prime Evolution* foi gigantesca) — para manter você sempre voltando ao jogo. Prós: Designs de criaturas criativos com um estilo de pixel art belíssimo Muita diversidade nas *builds* (membros do esquadrão, relíquias, receitas) Progressão satisfatória Desenvolvedores dedicados Contras: Início um pouco lento nos primeiros 30 minutos Falta de opções de música Sem multiplayer online nativo (dizem que soluções de terceiros funcionam bem) Para encerrar: o jogo é muito fofo e feito com muito carinho. A história de fundo (*lore*) presente na construção do mundo é empolgante, e eu adoraria ver uma aventura focada em narrativa com os Shards!

Every little critter has so much personality and also hits like a truck no matter how you build the run, ive genuinely gotten invested in the lore and the pixel art is gorgeous. Peak game

I like the creatures, their abilities, and also the lore. The progression seems a little grindy to me. There's a lot of goals to attack, so that mitigates it at least. I enjoyed it more than I didn't, and that's all I ask from a game.

死妈垃圾游戏

wdnmd吹我都不知道怎么吹这游戏，对比其他类幸存者有任何一丢丢优势吗？局内局外所有加成都是数值数值数值，而且只有攻击攻速范围这3个。评价为抄吸血鬼幸存者抄不明白，拉完了。 以及，看到给类幸存者游戏塞远程怪海的，有一个算一个全都可以无脑给差评，不会错的

你们的数值策划是几个人啊？自己的游戏没有内部测试的吗？不觉得玩起来没有任何肉鸽游戏应该有的爽感吗？ 第一个问题你的游戏设定：小怪血量高，密度高，还塞了大量远程怪，操控的角色数值低得要死，这就是你所谓的挑战性吗？血量高导致清不掉怪，密度高导致捡不到经验球，远程怪吐弹幕导致走位受限，一局下来就是疯狂逃窜，一路刮痧导致一局游戏又臭又长体验极差。小怪的压力比BOSS还大，真给我看傻了。 第二点，局外的成长是怎么设计的？升满需要的资源你们自己算过要多少时间吗？你们就拿这个硬拉游戏时长？ 第三点，你这个组合技怎么还设个单独升级啊，直接跟着主角的成长走就行了啊，现在是光有特效没有伤害啊。 游戏制作者一定要玩过游戏，推荐你们找几个类幸存者玩一下，去玩一下土豆吧，别浪费美术资源

It's not bad, the idea is really fun but I feel like the execution of the gameplay is done in a really boring way. It also feels like it's much more of a bullet hell than it is a bullet heaven. The further you get through the stages, the more projectiles you have to dodge and the more enemies with different abilities and movement patterns you have to move around. You play as a creature with a base ability, and once you reach max level you evolve and get an extra ability, and/or your base one changes to be more powerful. You get other creatures as supports during your runs, and there's some synergies between different creature types that activate passive abilities. Nothing felt particularly run changing or build enabling to be honest. Some of the damage passives feel very underwhelming compared to others. For example poison stacks up very quickly and ticks for 200 damage each time, but the rain cloud ability did like 50 damage per tick. It feels like either poison's way too strong or the other ones need a bit of a balance pass to make them more interesting options to go for. There's a lot of relics that will either make you stronger or impact the way you'll play during your run. It's a fun idea, but ultimately I ended up going with reduced cooldown almost every single run because you need so much damage in the later stages, and even more so if you increase the difficulty on top. The difficulty curve of the game feels fine on normal difficulty as you progress through the stages, but when you crease the difficulty level itself, I didn't notice much changing besides more enemies with increased health and they do more damage to you. Except you don't really have great ways to scale your own damage up, and there aren't really any crazy creature/ability combinations that will make you pop off. Another thing I disliked is that you reach full power toward the end of your run. You barely get to play for a quarter of your run at full strength, and there's no way to keep going once you beat the stage's final boss, so you have to start a new run and be weak again. It leads to most of your time spent playing the game feeling kinda weak, until you unlock the damage increase relics, or the cooldown reduction ones. The meta upgrades don't feel very interesting either. It's modest numerical increases for pretty much all of them; they aren't game changing and cost so much gold that you don't actually notice much of an increase from one run to another, because of how few levels you can buy between runs. I thought for a good while on giving this a positive or negative review, but ultimately I have to go with negative. I really like the ideas here, but the gameplay felt stale very quickly and the progression was so uninteresting that the game just cannot compete with other titles in the genre in its current state. I understand that the aim was to allow for more strategy during runs, but what actually ends up happening is every run feels more or less the same, and you're just running away from things the entire time until the timer runs out. You hardly ever feel like you have actually gotten powerful, or made a crazy combo that feels like you're getting away with something. And when you do get something really good, you enjoy it for a few minutes and the run's over because you can't achieve it until only a few minutes are left in the run. Took 35 hours to 100%. I think it's got a lot of potential, but it just falls flat overall in my opinion.