Star Realms

Super fun. Love the campaigns. Lots of variety. Definitely sufficient challenge. There's some problems, e.g. if you're mostly doing campaigns the process to buy the next expansion is more awkward than it should be, and some of the achievements seem very arbitrarily. I'm several expansions in and I've yet to encounter a game that I couldn't beat on hard mode, although sometimes it takes a lot of tries and good luck on top of good strategy. An undo feature (e.g. if you play a scout and then realize you wanted to use patrol mech's ability to scrap it) would be good. Also ally ability draws happen automatically, whereas I believe proper gameplay is you should be able to put off using the ally ability, for instance if you want to buy a card first. Also the log is all but unreadable, which is a problem because the opponent's gameplay is often too fast to follow easily. So, yeah there's some things that could be cleaned up or improved but I don't care because it's really fun. Incidentally I appreciate that star realms (the card game and the app both) give a sense of being fast-paced and urgent but aren't actually time-sensitive; if I need to pay attention to something else for a moment I can do that and come back to the game without needing to pause or ruining my chance to do well.

This game is fantastic. From what I understand, it was created by one of the guys responsible for Magic: The Gathering, and it shows in the deck building and stacking of abilities. If you enjoy Magic, but don’t want to spend time on deck management or between games, check this gem out. You start with a basic deck each game and draft from a market in the center. As you learn the different factions, you learn what combinations work well together and get to a point where you can almost always find a good option in the market. I’ve only played the free version so far, and I’ve enjoyed it immensely. In fact, you can play the first campaign stage and then just play battles pretty much forever without paying anything. If you do decide to pay for content, it is reasonably priced in my opinion. A physical version of this game would cost around $20. There is a similar game called “Cthulhu Realms” if you’re into the Cthulhu mythos. My fingers are crossed for Hero Realms to come to the App Store.

First off, game is great. Probably one of the most successful boardgame ports I have played and I’ve played them all. Star realms is very easy to pick up and very approachable for new comers. I mainly play it online with a group of friends so I will not comment on the way the AI seems to manipulate decks. Online async play on any platform is almost flawless. ALMOST. The reason for the title of this review and my major gripe is that the online play gives you spoilers. The list of ongoing games tells you the players Authority AFTER the upcoming turn. Meaning you will know if your opponent had an awesome turn even before you see it. That is disappointing. But what’s worse is that the game will tell you you have lost before you see the final turn. It’s way more compelling to have a little bit of authority left and draw a bunch of good cards hoping you can last one more turn and then watching your opponent draw every card in her deck and annihilate you. Instead you get an iPhone notification that you lost or the ongoing games icon changes to “YOU LOST”. Lame. Why not make all that update AFTER you watch your opponent’s turn? That is satisfying to all sides. Anyhoo, I wish I could say that’s a minor gripe but I find it really disappointing. That said, I’ve still played dozens and dozens of Star realms and will continue to do so. Thanks.

I enjoy playing Star Realms, but after all of these years the app still remains a mediocre port of a desktop application. Why are we tapping on arrows to scroll through cards on a touch screen device? This makes no sense and is extremely counterintuitive and cumbersome. This latest updates makes the stealth needle morph into the card you clone. This is fine unless you want scrap the card you copied; you have to be careful to scrap the original and not the copy with no visual clues, just logically remembering that the original came first. The AI is infuriating at the end of games. It will play out complete turns even when it can already end the game. Real fun when it has two battle screechers and you get to watch the painfully slow animation of shredding the whole tableau of cards twice (I have NEVER seen it scrap less than all of them) while you’re sitting there with 5 health and the computer already has 38 attack. I have a notification badge on my iPad icon even though I have no active games. My friend does, too, so it’s not just me. So irritating. I’ve tried everything I can to delete it, but even removing the app and reinstalling only works until the next time I play online and then the notification is back. I appreciate that one price unlocks tablet, phone, and desktop apps but I really wish they would put more effort into the iOS app.

This game was great until the last few updates. In the last few weeks the developer has decided to make small changes to gameplay and UI that have made the game annoying to play. Since these updates, the game has been less responsive and a little more annoying to play. Specifically, I’m referring to how close some of the buttons have been moved together, allowing for errors during game play. However, the worst thing that has been done is now players can concede mid turn and it stops the game immediately. This is incredibly annoying as many players use this when they know they’re going to be defeated midway through another players turn in a live game. It’s one thing to concede defeat, but it’s unsportsmanlike to cut the winning player’s turn short because the losing player doesn’t want to see their loss.