Throne of Shards

[h1] BUYER BEWARE - Borderline asset flip. [/h1] The Dev, mentioned in the games credits as Cesar Yaril, has released a product that is utterly broken. The game is in a completely unacceptable state, even for early access. The only parts of the project that are decent, are also store bought assets. Those being [url=https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/templates/systems/tcg-engine-online-card-game-253269] TcgEngine by Indie Marc [/url] on the unity asset store [i] (which Throne of Shards implements with it's default pre-packaged game) [/i] and an uncredited art pack that can be found on many [url=https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Nussygame.DeckDeFantasy] other (usually mobile) games. [/url] From what I can tell, all of the visual assets within the game, as well as marketing materials come from either this art pack, or the default assets from TcgEngine. None from Cesar Yaril himself. [i] At time of writing, the only other review beside my own is the dev on his personal account giving his own game a positive review. [/i] [h2] Bugs, and Broken Content... [/h2] What the dev has built around these assets is largely non-functional. The game cannot be made to go fullscreen, nor does it have even basic settings options outside of audio sliders. All of which save for the master volume, do nothing. It has a language select toggle for multilingual support not mentioned on the steam store page, though this is likely for the best as this is another "feature" that is not actually implemented in a working state. Cards all display awkward "button" text across them like the dev didn't know how to remove the defaults from the unity game object that the card data is loaded into (or couldn't be bothered to fix it), transition animations will frequently fail halfway, dialogue clips out of the boxes. (to say nothing of the horrendous google translate dialogue in the game.) So many of the UI interfaces have awkwardly placed or entirely wrong click detection causing an input on one element to seemingly click another. The procedural generation of the dungeon doesn't work, so the arrangement of tiles is always the same with the only difference being the presence or absence of doors, keys, useless lamp posts, etc. Likely due to the unity game objects themselves failing to load properly. I could go on and on. It would be faster to mention what isn't broken. Which is just the core card gameplay. Since this was built off a store bought asset, this part works. At least to some degree. Though the balancing of the actual card design is atrocious. Even if the store bought asset functions, it can't redeem this miserable experience. [h2] The Core Gameplay Loop [/h2] Gameplay is almost not worth mentioning. There is practically nothing here. A relatively shallow card pool consisting of mostly completely useless cards, and a handful of utterly game breaking ones. It's clear no thought was put into making the game balanced or enjoyable. It tries to be Magic the Gathering but only takes the worsts parts and slaps them together without basic competence in card design. The "game" is as mentioned above just the TcgEngine Demo scene with an extended card pool. Surrounding this is the shell of a roguelike dungeon crawler, but the execution is again either hollow, or absent. Card battles award money which can be exchanged for [b] THE [/b] card pack. [i] For there is only one in the entire game... [/i] The "floors" are just a random mess of tiles. Sometimes not even connected or accessible. In theory, the macro gameplay loop should be that you battle enemies, collect keys to unlock doors, use money to buy cards and progress to the next floor. I say should, because in practice this does not happen. Levels can generate such that the only keys on the map needed to progress are themselves locked behind doors you cannot open yet. Requiring you to [b] fully delete your save file [/b] and restart as you are now hard locked from continuing. When I was finally able to get to the first floor exit door, it proved to be a moot point as the second floor is non-functional. The merchant is broken so interacting with them soft locks you, the new deck rules for the second floor SHOULD require that your deck only contains two colors but what it actually does is check for the presence or absence of certain cards in your deck in a manner that I still don't quite understand and will invalidate even mono-colored decks if you encounter this error. rebuilding the deck doesn't fix the issue either, by the way. Once that deck slot has the bug, it cascades to any changes you make in that slot. The cherry on top is that the second floor exit door didn't even generate on the map. Despite the claim that the game is fully playable, there is no way to progress past the second floor. Or perhaps that is the entire game? At this point, I'm not ruling out the possibility. If so the game ends unceremoniously with you having to hit Alt+F4 to exit. [h2] Performance [i] (yes, really) [/i] [/h2] If you can believe it, I even experienced two game crashes and frame drops within the single hour of playtime I put into this shovelware! A simple 2d card game should not be dropping frames on an RTX 4090... Not to mention the game is almost 2GB which is suspiciously large for a product that contains so little content. Optimization seems to be a foreign concept. The first boss of the game is figuring out how to keep the application running long enough to play it. [h2] [b] DON'T BUY THIS! [/b] [/h2] It's clear to me that I have already put in more effort and attention to detail in writing this review than Cesar Yaril did in the entire development and release of this game. While I do not know if steam will deem it as a direct asset flip under their own guidelines; I can certainly say that Throne of Shards is a thoughtless cash grab, and a waste of your time and money. Gameplay is largely un-implemented, broken, or brain dead. Saying the games narrative (a handful of text scrolls) feels like it was written by AI would be an insult to artificial intelligence. More like written by cleverbot. I will be getting a refund. Do yourself a favor, don't buy this game.

[i]Disclosure: The dev emailed me and provided me a free key.[/i] [h1]Difficult to Recommend... right now.[/h1] This is a game that is [b]very[/b] in development. When I was given a key, it was before the game was actually purchasable. It had a solid framework and some interesting ideas, but [i], at that time,[/i] there was a lot of issues. Cards did not do what was written on them, cards literally didn't work, and some enemies would softlock the game. I believe. It's been less than a month from when I sent off two different lists of issues, and I believe they've been fixed since then. I recently again took at brief look at this game to find that a single update changed how the card game plays on a fundamental level. Before, minions on the board could attack the enemy player, which taps them, or attack a tapped minion. This lead to a strange sort of back and forth that I don't think I've seen before. Control style decks needed a way to deal with the fact that minions will usually get to attack before you can remove them, either with Taunts, Lifesteal or Removal. Now, minions can only attack the enemy player and the defending player can choose to throw a minion in the way to block. [h3]What's my point with this?[/h3] The game is extremely under development to the point where I don't know if anything I say will be true in the future. If I had the energy to point out any specific bugs or issues, I'm sure they'd be fixed within a week. I feel like if I said the new blocking system was worse, it might change back. I think what's really missing is a specific vision. Really, the developer needs to sit down and picture how this game should feel to play once it's officially done. [h3]Should you buy it?[/h3] I mean, it's functional. For as much as I've played it, I haven't gotten close to the actual end of it. As you progress through floors, different deckbuilding restrictions are applied, and I enjoy that. But, is it worth 20 bucks, right now? Can I recommend something when it's still wrapped in the cocoon of metamorphosis? If the images on the store page look interesting or if you have a hankering for a single player card game with nothing else to play, sure. Give it a go. Oh, and I suppose to further prove my aforementioned points, the one of the other two reviews is a long, respectable negative review. In the two weeks since it was posted, most of the issues mentioned (volume slider not working, 'button' being on the cards, garbage floor generation) have been fixed as far as I can tell. I know for sure that the 'one card pack' issue has also been fixed since. And, while I cannot say if the asset flips issues are valid, I don't believe being an asset flip is inherently a bad thing.

I like the concept!, its alittle bit rough around the edges, but so far is really fun, really scratches the Magic shandalard dungeons, love it hope it gets even better!

*Throne of Shards* is a title with clear potential. There are still several aspects that need polishing, especially regarding the user experience and interface, where it’s evident that the project is still in its early stages. However, even in this early state, the game manages to deliver entertaining moments and reveals a solid foundation to build upon. I believe it’s worth giving it a chance. It’s clear that the development team is committed and actively working to improve the product, which gives me confidence in its future evolution.