Shards of Infinity
reviews and complaints

Absolutely love the game and fact that it's on mobile. I've gotten so much more of my friends group to try Shards now that it's an app. My only gripe is the attention it's given. The app crashes constantly, for any reason. It hasn't received another update or fix in 2 months, which says to me they are either just waiting for the expansion, or are giving up on supporting the app as it grows.

The developers did a great job of translating this game for mobile. It's really fast to learn how to play because the controls are so intuitive. I especially love jumbo mode that lets you read the text on the cards more easily.

There are lots of players so it's quick to get into games. Super looking forward to the expansion.

Initially thought it was a bit pricey but it's a premium game and worth the money!

Beautiful and well-made app that doesn't destroy the battery on my older phone. Game is fun and balanced but could use a little more card variety; I'm looking forward to the upcoming expansion.

One minor issue I've found is that when I play the ally that lets you copy a previously played card I can't open my previously played cards to check what it'll do. This is a very small gripe in an otherwise brilliant implementation.

I love this game and have been playing for years now. Unfortunately, the app does log you out with error messages accessing the server often. Things that would enhance this app would be the ability prompt other players to take their turn or an option to extend the game if all players agree because a lot of times opponents time out or have time expire. Some pre written messages to other players would also be a fun add as long as they are scripted/not negative.

The promised expansion is the only thing lacking in this game. The game is put together beautifully and the play dynamic is incredible.

Its to bad this game seems to have been abandoned by Temple Gates, otherwise it would have really taken off

Update: New patch adds speed increase! It will exit you out of the game extremely quickly and repeatedly! Test your patches before you release them. Every time I start a game now, it plays maybe 1-2 turns, then crashes. Sad. But it looks like they fixed the big Zetta the Encryptor bug, so that's huge. Keeping at 4 stars until they fix the crashes for playing with medium opponents, but like the game very much.

Game is great and plays very cleanly like Ascension, but with a different theme and a couple different mechanics. Much more player against player than Ascension.

There seems to be a rather small set of cards as well, but hopefully that will be addressed with DLC.

This game is awesome! Exactly like the card game. The app works but it's got a lot of bugs. It lags and gets stuck on cards quite often. I have to shut down the app and reopen it but it hasn't lost my progress yet. Like I said, it works but it has its issues. Fix this and I'd give it five stars.

This game is great, definitely my favorite deck-building card game.
My first time playing was with real cards in person. This app runs pretty smooth and saves so much time with automated counting and drawing!

However, it crashes. All. The. Time.

I'm on an iPhone SE with iOS 14.6
So far it crashes basically when anything else happens on my phone:
-Whenever I get a text while playing
-When I get a low battery pop-up
-When I open iPhone control center

And it crashes a lot when I hit "Next Game" to cycle between my active games.

Other than that pretty solid

Fantastic AI (Keldon's from Race For The Galaxy - which is the best modern board game AI I've ever seen). I'm a noob though and the cards go by too fast to get a sense of the ai is doing. Seems really silly they would do a speed update and not add a slow speed because I've seen many other people complain in various forums about this and it's not like it's hard to do. It would also be nice if we could add an option to view the other players deck (at least a learning mode against the ai). Otherwise it's too hard to see what the ai is doing and learn how to appropriately adjust strategy in response. The game is great for experts but unfriendly to noobs. Also game has frozen 3 times now during ai turn. It's always during the best games too.

I was a big fan of Ascension, and Shards certain feels very familiar, but with many interesting improvements. I'm especially enjoying the mercenary mechanic (getting the choice to immediately use-and-banish some cards instead of solely adding them to the deck).

The factions are rather familiar (roughly, blue drawing cards and having thresholds, green wanting pairs-or-more of green, tan having a focus on stays-in-play cards, and purple being damage and deck-cleaning), and it's certainly interesting to see some reincarnations of Ascension cards or effects (eg. acquire a card of cost 6 or less), while still putting them in a new context/balance.

I'm absolutely looking forward to seeing where future expansions/card-sets go from here!

Anyone who likes Ascension should definitely check this out. Uses some similar mechanics, but with many different twists.

Temple Gates has done a great job of adapting the game. Interface looks and feels great. Runs smoothly. All very intuitive and easy to pick up even if you've never played the card game before.

Best of all is that when you buy this game...you get a game. It's not just another mobile game trap trying to shove micro transactions in your face constantly and asking you to grind for hours every day. You get all the cards there are right away and you just play whenever you feel like it.

Nice graphics and UI, but for $7.99, I expected a bit better. Freezes on medium level every few games. It hasn't been updated in over a year so probably won't get fixed.

Plus the medium level is a huge leap in difficulty over easy (as in un-winnable). I've played 50+ games on the app, and lost 10 in a row to the bot. Doesn't seem very reasonable. But hey, that's what one gets when playing a near perfect computer...

So about $8 will get you some entertainment before probably deleting and looking elsewhere

Had a blast with the physical game and was excited to try out the app. Played my first online game with a friend who also played the physical game. Unfortunatley, it abandoned the game we were actively playing after 30 mins. It was a great match going back & forth, but we will never know who would have won. Any way you can add an option to extend the play time? Other than that, really enjoyed the app adaptation of a great game & looking forward to the expansion.

Between Shards, Hearthstone, and Gwent, Shards is by far the better choice from the App Store. I own a physical copy of Shards and both expansions, and it's a really solid card drafting/ deck builder. But it's app version is also great, where some games can be held back in digital form.

For instance, Hearthstone could be a fun quick little game seeing as the mechanics of the game itself are really simple. But the gameplay is held back by how over produced the app is. I can't just jump in for a quick game, or easily build my deck without seeing a few load screens or swiping some pages. It's just feels really slow for such a simple little game that I just want to jump into.

Gwent has the same issues. It's way over produced. And you have to sign your life away to jump into a game.

Shards as an app is so simple. You can either play 3 different AI difficulties, join someone else's game, start your own game, or add irl friends and play them. And the best part is you can do all of these options at the same time. I have 4-7 games going at any given time. You can leave the game, go about your life, and come back to take your turn. You never feel too locked in.

It does seem a little abandoned though. The expansion don't seem to be coming to digital any time soon if ever, and there are a few bugs that will probably never get fixed. If the AI has a big turn, it'll grind the app to a halt and crash until you cancel that game. Instead the AI should pace itself and try not to do too much at once. And I have a game that was forfeited by an opponent and the prompt for that game won't go away.

I'm a lifelong gamer with card and deck builders my favorite.
The game itself is fantastic and the app is very well done.

It plays very smooth with beautiful graphics.

I also wanted to give a huge thanks for the option to increase the font size on the cards.
As on older gamer this simple ability makes a huge difference.

Thanks for a great game and an awesome app.

When the game doesn't crash, it plays well. Normally I play at “Hard AI," which usually wins. In cases when I'm winning, typically when the AI player has less than 10 lives, the game freezes. Closing and restarting the app does not fix this.

Maybe it gets stuck in a loop, or it's a sore loser. Whatever the case, freezing up when I'm winning is why I rated this game 3 stars.

I've seen it lock up when Hard AI is winning, but that's seldom.

Also, there is a bug where you cannot undo a banish selection when the banish 2 card wraith is played. Tapping on a selected card should toggle the selection back to deselected.

Otherwise, this is a faithful reproduction of the card game, and the graphics are beautiful.

UpdateTheres a speed option now for the cards which is awesome! They added an “Exhaust Champions" button which helps not forget since they are tucked away. Itd still be nice to play with some of the people on the facebook pages I follow without sharing me email but thats minor now and something I can bet will be added in the future cause it seems these devs listen to their fan base.

Seems like a good quality game so far but I would love to see you add an option to speed up the play of the CPU. When you get later in the game watching each CPU card pull up, sit there for a second then get played gets really tiresome. Also I feel like the Champion cards could have a better spot, I find myself forgetting they are there and I dont use them. Also I wish there was a different method to adding friends besides entering their email, I dont know a tom of people that play this game so id like to play with anyone that does but I dont really want stangers having my email. Im a big fan of the physical game so I hope this one lives up and gets a good community of people playing!

I have the hard copy of this game as well as this. For a small deck building game, it is fantastic. The phone version has that same great energy when playing and generally feel it is well done. Biggest complaint right now is the lack of expansions and support. The one that says “coming soon" has been that way for about two years. It appears there is no support since then based on the last round of comments and update for the game. The base game is great, but the expansion makes it even better. It needs it. I would say don't buy this due to the lack of activity from the developers. That expansion is probably not going to come out. Spend your money on the hard copy instead.

So this rating is not because of the overall functionality of the app. Pass and play is great. Online play is decent. Overall it is a pretty slick little app for a good game.

This complaint is exclusively about the AI. It cheats. At first I wasn't sure but over time I have documented and kept track. The AI are not constrained by the actual rules of the game. They are given extra resources, allowed to draw extra cards without anything in the game that says they may, allowed to advance their power level without any cards to do so, etc. It becomes impossible to beat them because they are at an unbelievable advantage.

It will do this for seven games in a row on the hard AI. You will lose every single one of those seven games. Then on the eighth, ninth, or 10th, you are going to win two out of three. I have documented this pattern at least 50 separate times.

And this means that it is actually very difficult to genuinely improve at the game using the AI.

Please fix this. It's awful.

Don't waste your time! The game could be decent if it actually worked. Even on an iphoneX it hangs whenever too many cards are in play. Cards mysteriously don't play their effects correctly (this is the deal breaker!). For example, even after starting a turn with 30 mastery, playing the “infinity" shard was worth 15 power.

Finally, if you enjoy online play, go elsewhere. The online play is extremely boring, imho, with most players taking 20-30 seconds per play, after you wait half an hour to even start most of the time.