The Gone-Over Board

NOTE: This post contains impressions of the Beta version of the iOS app version of Shards of Infinity. The game is also coming to Android and Steam.

I have seen your new addiction, and it is Shards of Infinity on your phone. Apps can seem like they poison the well of the board game experience, robbing you of the face-to-face interaction and human presence that for so many of us are the point. Deckbuilders are uniquely suited to quick play on your phone, though, since turns are often over very quickly and so much of the game is shuffling, shuffling, shuffling. Something it turns out that computers can do pretty well while leaving the interesting choices to you!

The card game came out originally in physical form last year, from the designers behind a game you may have heard of called Ascension. That game and Star Realms are clearly in the same family, with the hallmarks of play centered on the one-versus-one experience (though a game can have up to four players), a shared market in the center, and the main strategy living in the synergies when playing cards of the same color.

Making it worth another look are thoughtful variations on the formula that give potential longevity. The first is an alternate victory condition called Mastery that is built up by certain cards and powers up other cards, including some your starting deck. The second variation is the ability to buy some cards from the market and use them instantly instead of adding them to your deck, giving you a short-term gain that can also trigger the color-combos of other cards in a pinch at the cost of not being able to use them over and over as they come into your hand.

Shards of Infinity inhabits a great space of letting you flit back and forth between games, making one quick decision to evade death against one foe before diving into the next game where you’re locked in a constant back-and-forth with an intractable enemy. The key problem in these asynchronous online games is losing context between play sessions, where you’re equally as perplexed about what your own strategy was in this particular game as you are about your opponent’s plans. Shards lets you quickly scan through your existing deck to try to ascertain what you were thinking and, possibly, where it all started to go wrong. It’s still easy to lose context and not play as optimally as if you were locked into a single game seated across from your opponent, but the convenience of almost always being able to get in a game (or games) far outweighs the drawbacks.

Turns can be over in less than a minute, then the helpful “Next Game” does what it says and whisks you off to the next confrontation awaiting your tactical acumen.

The artwork is gorgeous and the animations are very fluid. I’ve found the interface to be mostly intuitive, with the occasional clunkiness arising mostly around viewing champion cards, both your own and your opponent’s. Bugs have been few and far between and they seem to be in the polishing phase. The lobby is simplistic but works well enough. I have run into sporadic instances of crashes, usually when taking a screenshot or moving between games. Patches seem to be coming out regularly during the beta and addressing issues in a timely manner, and what we’ve got already is fantastic.

If they’re able to keep the new content flowing regularly, I could easily see notifications for this app dotting the landscape of board gamer phones, ripping productivity to shreds and putting a significant dent in the economy. Shards of Infinity is coming to your phone and I’ll see you on the battlefield.

You can sign up for the beta here.