SkyShard: City Battler

I watched ItsBen321 play Backpack Battles for so long, and had high hopes when I heard about this game. I also watched RegisKillbin play Hearthstone for years. I do think this game is a testament to the small guy achieving their dreams, and that counts for something. But as far as the substance of Skyshard, standing on its own two feet, the game kinda blows. The art style has no great consistency, and the game seems to be littered with WIP stand-in art that looks like a 3rd grader drew it on a time limit. The game isn't very well balanced, many units feel completely useless in 99% of scenarios, and most late game builds revolve around the same handful of absolutely broken generically good units (Forcefield being chief among those) After a few games I didn't feel like I was seeing anything really new, and the formula breaking choices this game made of having a much larger playing field with many more units did not add anything to my enjoyment of the genre. It just feels much harder to wrap my head around synergies and intended (or unintended) combos. There is also a VERY large element of luck in this game, in that you roll for a subset of options (Ex: A tier 2-3 nature unit) and then roll within that subset. I don't feel like I have much control over the outcomes or directions of the build, at least not more than just taking the best options I get offered, which is the video game equivalent of going the way the wind blows me. That isn't strategy, it is a barely interesting casino but without the satisfying payoff. I can't in good faith recommend this game, which disappoints me greatly.

Great game with devs that really care about creating a fun, customer-first experience. Tons of combinations to find and a really fun gameplay loop full of "just one more" moments.

I'll be honest. This game isn't going to be for everyone. I enjoy the gameplay and will play a game every now and then, but it's never going to be a main game or a time sink for me. The complexity is daunting at first glance and like any auto-battler, card game, rougelite etc. it takes time to understand what the units do and how best to utilise them. Despite being in early access, it is fairly well polished and the good news is it will only continue to get better. The best part of the game so far in my experience is the community and the developers. Ben and Regis truly show passion for the project and are constantly engaging with the community to shape the game. There is a discord and a subreddit where they constantly read feedback and respond - and you can quite often see that they listen to the feedback when it comes to each patch. In summary; it may not be a game for everyone, but for those of you who love this style of game you will love SkyShard and also the community that comes with it.

Transcendently good tactics auto-battler game with that pure indie spark that preludes a best-selling banger. Deep strategtic depth and highly-addicting game loop. Especially impressive is the fact it uses asynchronous multiplayer, which is rather uncommon. The demo is quite generous in content too. Try it out! You won't regret it.

I love this game. I've been watching the the game develop through videos on Youtube, and honestly it didn't seem like my jam, but I wanted to support the creators. And I'm SO GLAD I decided to really give it a go. I'm having a ton of fun and find myself doing runs whenever I have a little time. The asynchronous game play is really nice when you're busy and can only play here and there. I keep trying different builds and am loving how much variety it is but still lets you make a board that feels good. I'm so excited to see what they have coming down the pike as well, but it already has such a nice little loop even if they never update again, I'll be playing this for a long time to come

Played 4 hours so far and only really scratched the surface of all the combinations and synergies in the game. The base game mode is such a satisfying game loop and is complemented really well by the more restrictive alternate modes. I look forward to the game growing and evolving from such a positive start.

I purchased this game before the 4th of July holiday. All I could think about while celebrating with friends and family was getting back home so I could play this game. Super fun.

I feel bad writing this because I watch Regis's content and wanted to support but... there is just very little satisfaction in building these islands. As an experiment, I tried just grabbing random units and never reading what they did and I had about equal success as when I tried to build a cohesive team

Very fun game that is getting regular updates. A lot of depth which leads to a steep learning curve. Great art makes even weak runs fun.

Love it, some QOL on building placement is necessary as there are many to manage (like why not include "square selection" to move multiple buildings at once ? ) this is a serious competitor to games like The Bazaar (which i play a lot a lot), but sadly low budget :D. gratz for this early access, and i'm not even a Regis fan.