Shardbound Hits Open Beta on June 27th on Epic Games Store

After a resounding community response to a tweet from the game’s profile, the developers of Shardbound, a multiplayer collectible tactics game, have been persuaded into publicly launching their Web3 title into open beta on Thursday, June 27th, via the Epic Games Store.

What’s Included in This Beta Release?

For this playtest, which looks set to be available for a limited, unspecified amount of time based on the Discord announcement, everyone will be able to jump in and enjoy strategic gameplay on hexagonal battlefields that select users were able to play in the Exclusive Beta, while getting some neat new additions that further improve the blockchain gaming experience.

Among the changes include new card and pack options, upgraded art for Characters, Spells, Relics and Equipment, as well as a host of gameplay, matchmaking and UI/UX updates to make the game more accessible and fun than before. Card leveling changes have also been made to make the power levels of all decks more balanced.

Next to all these improvements, players will be able to join progressing through Faction Battle Passes, consisting of a variety of different quests to complete in order to earn faction cards. There will be daily, weekly and periodical quests through which you earn XP to unlock new levels in the Battle Pass, in turn unlocking new cards and Royal Marks, the latter used to buy cards at the in-game shop.

Over time, you’ll likely end up getting duplicate cards. This is where the Card Upgrades feature will come into play, as it will allow you to use those copies to level up your card, making it have stronger health, attack or spell power stats.

Those are all the details that seem to be available for now. You can pre-register ahead of this public release on the game’s official website via email or Immutable Passport, with the latter option said to give instant access to the crypto game once it releases. By pre-registering, you will be able to claim an exclusive playable card in the first week of public beta.

What Is Shardbound?

Shardbound is a free-to-play strategic card-based game in which you battle on tactical hexagonal maps, placing cards that transform into 3D units that are used in 1v1 turn-based gameplay.

A match is won by taking down the opposing movable commander on the opposite side of the board, or by collecting 10 Victory Points. Each match spawns only 3 Victory Crystals from which you can get Victory Points by hitting them. While 1 Victory Point is awarded for hitting a Victory Crystal, destroying one gets you 2 points and 2 bonus Mana Gems to use for actions such as summoning units, casting spells and so on. Players need to wait a full turn to actually earn the Victory Point(s) gathered by the unit or commander, meaning that if the opponent kills your unit holding the Victory Point(s), they’ll actually steal the points.

A deck can consist of 5 card types: Commander, Relic, Minion, Spell and Equipment. Each deck needs to have one Commander and one Relic.

Minions and Commanders belong to one of 5 different factions represented by different colors. While Commanders are placed on opposite sides of the boards, Minions have to be summoned onto the field, and the positioning of your units could prove to be strategically important, as there are a diverse range of different environments players can battle in and try to use to their tactical advantage. Relics are equipped by Commanders and provide them with special abilities but also Dual Color Decks, meaning you can set up a Dual Faction Deck by equipping a Relic that has a different color from all other cards in the deck. Spells can have various effects, including healing, terrain alteration and more, while Equipment generally includes weapons and armor you can add to a summoned minion to make them stronger.

So far, no specific Web3 features have been revealed yet, but we can likely expect to see the ability to own cards as NFTs arrive at some point in the near future.