Star Realms

Toddler’s Slide: The Game

There will be a TL;DR at the end.

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I’ll keep it brief - this card game sucks.
But it sucks in a very specific, highly charming way.

The benefit of this experience over others is how fast it is. Matches can be done in mere minutes.
There is virtually no strategy involved - aside from acquiring the most ideal cards.

Every turn, you play all cards in your hand, no matter what; there’s basically no strategy involved, you just have to make sure that every time you get a hand, it’s strong when you play each card.
At the beginning, your entire deck is just basic cards that give you coin - which allow you to purchase cards from the store, which is random and available to both your opponent and yourself.
There are two basic kinds of cards: ships and bases. Once a base is played, it’s out of your deck and remains in play until an enemy destroys it with damage.
There are 4 factions with their own cards which synergize when same-flag cards are in play:
The Federation has great economy and keeps you healed up
The Empire allows you to overwhelm your opponent by drawing cards and discarding theirs
The Bots give you tons of utility and the ability to trim down your hand to adapt
The Blob is big damage. The Blob is king.
What does this mean? It means that strategy devolves into simple pattern recognition and synergies. Some cards are better than others, and some synergies are more powerful based on what you have.
Between the luck of the market and playing your hand to completion, it can cause some incredibly strange plays to occur without effort. Play your hand - the Federation and Empire synergies cause you to chain together an unlikely sting of cards where you heal 12 hitpoints and deal 20 damage in one turn. The next turn you play a trade ship and a few bases. It’s random.
No matter how random, justified, or clever one might be - it just boils down to purchasing the best available options at the time. You don’t buy blob units unless you already have some, and you don’t get cards that don't synergize with your deck. Maybe get a scrapper bot card to shred your beginner cards and make your deck a bit better, or opt for the Federation Trade ship for the ramp, even if there’s little to no synergy. You get bases because they make your deck more eloquent and soak up damage - and you get ships for their active effects. It becomes challenging to break the cycle, and there’s not much room to interrupt the steady and brain-numbing flow of the game’s natural pacing.

The game is clearly unfinished. It hardly stands on its own legs - it’s janky, awkward, and hardly functions as a card game. But why do I keep playing it?

There’s an aspect of turning your brain off and the drastic lack of fairness that makes the game both painlessly quick, low stakes, and entertaining all the same. It’s a micro gambling addiction with pretty music and good card art.

I don’t like what the developers did by stringing together a veritable army of neigh-worthless DLC packs to try and con people into paying a lot more for this glorified Flash title than it will ever be worth.

All the same, I enjoy playing this game every so often against the AI, the campaign challenges are nice, and chatting with friends as we lob our cards at each other is always welcome.

The lack of vision, bad balance, and baffling lack of design eloquence is shockingly poor - yet through the blunderous and fickle creation - there is a solid core that keeps you playing over and over, win or loss, for the lightning quick matches that blur together when you step away.

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TL;DR

5.5/10
Star Realms is a Competent game.
It’s like that short little slide you had growing up, the plastic one in the backyard: you kept on giggling and laughing, tumbling down its decline before rushing around and taking the few steps to enjoy it again - and then again. In retrospect it’s hard to remember why - with the cheap half-melted and dusty plastic offering only a shallow slope as it rattles in place. Maybe you were young and easily impressed, maybe you were bored and that's all you had, maybe you were with friends, maybe you were a little adrenaline junkie. At any rate, there’s no denying that running in circles to enjoy that insipid little slide was enjoyable, albeit simple. Maybe simple isn’t bad. Low quality and cynically designed as that moronic slide was, there’s never denying that tug on your senses once you reach its base - clamoring to feel its simple joys just one more time.

I loved this board game IRL so I bought full version to play with AI on hard mode and even when it's deffinitely not "full version" it's worth it anyways! Price is not that high and I enjoy playing this game over and over again! Gonna slowly buy other DLCs because I remember IRL there were some fun ones and I want to give something to developers for awesome job!

Great Game! Extremely well made card game with fun expansions, good campaign and easy multiplayer options

Don't get me wrong, I love Star Realms. It's a fun game to play and the artwork is beautiful and inspired.
However, the competitive system of the online game is very unbalanced in what are likely fundamental ways.
Some games will be completely pre-decided by the RNG system because you will never have access to the cheap cards you need to start building a deck.
For example, you can start first, only get one buy power on round one, and not be able to buy anything.
The other player buys all the any and all cards that allow them to draw more cards.
You now have guaranteed five buy power on round two, but the only cards available are high cost or damage only cards. So you buy two Explorers, leaving you with one buy power wasted.
It's by this time you've almost certainly lost the game.
Most games seem to be decided within the first four hands, and if you have zero faction cards by the end of turn two, you've lost. The community is small enough that there aren't many new players to match against, so there won't be many mistakes made by your opponents that you can leverage.
This doesn't matter as much on non-competitive play, but the ARENA requires six wins to finish and only allows one defeat. This requires a win rate of 85.7%. *Great* SR players are those considered to have a win rate of 60% or higher.
So, if you start an Arena and don't get at least three wins before a defeat, it saves a lot of time to just immediately concede the next game and start over.
This is of course assuming you can play the Arena for free, which only applies if you've bought the DLC required for that weekly Arena. If not, you have to use the in-game currency, which costs real world money and only give you one defeat before you lose it all and have to pay more real money to try again.

Edit: I'm still playing this game because I hate myself. The normal ranked games are by far the most fun because you can pick and play the format that you enjoy most. The Arena is still broken, with Event Cards greatly adding to the list of my current banes. Event Cards are very unbalanced as 50% affect the players differently. Often getting a series of Event cards in a row that might give your opponent 11 buy on round one, while you are simply allowed to draw 4 extra starting cards. This would be frustrating in ranked play, but it's infuriating in Arena play that doesn't allow mistakes. This makes games swing wildly based on RNG instead of skilled use of cards.

Fun deck building game that doesn't get boring thanks to the many additional desk you can purchase AND the story mode, which offers a change of the rules with every level. Game play is essentially the same as with the physical cards - but this version reminds you when you have money to spend or attacks you can make as well as card abilities you may have forgotten to use.

Honestly have gotten a ton of fun out of this game so far and will continue looking for packs whenever they are on sale. Takes a little bit of patience to ramp up into feeling like you can compete with others, but once you realise some card priorities things get a lot more fun.

Must have been an instant classic of the genre. Campaign can be a little uneven (looking at you, Rage Against the Cult). Addictive, although it made me realize that I appreciate an action economy (which this doesn't feature) as well as a purchase economy.

A very fun deck builder that has acquired a lot of content over the years, and as of 2022, is still acquiring more. The digital game here does not have every expansion (at time of writing) that the physical version does, but it does have most of it. The digital version is a bit of a second fiddle to the physical, but that doesn't mean that the creators ignore it. They've added new play modes and other content over time and still do tournaments. Plus you can really draw out some brutal beat downs against an AI that would make a real person hate you.

Truly excellent, fast-paced deckbuilder. Rewarding depth for the experienced player and flashy/cool enough I've taught my kids to play the paper version. Love it to bits <3

One of the best card games I have played, yet one of the worst computer games. The entire interface is frustrating and counter-intuitive from beginning to end.

I like Star Realms. It's fun, it has thematic artwork and gameplay, it's affordable. I just can't seem to get the hang of beating the AI past Easy. Other Hyoo-Monz, I can play, but they're as new to this as I am. The AI takes me down every time. But I shall continue to play, and learn, and enjoy the game.

Probably among the quickest deck-builders you'll play, this is a good digital implementation; however, it heavily leans on a plethora of micro-transactions for a host of expansions, that honestly, feels desperate.

Technically I can give two reviews in this case: SR the game (as in the rules of play) and SR the app.

The game is an excellent deck builder, deep, tactical and a lot of fun. Matches play like a breeze and there's ton of content to explore in the form of expansions. Game is a 10/10 for me. Must have.

The app is serviceable, it's not that pretty and it feels like a phone app on steam. Super good news, You have one account across all devices and cross play. You want to buy the Full game DLC cause that unlocks online play, then you can download SR on your phone and then bam, is with you always. That is freaking awesome. Menus are a little convoluted, just now invited my brother to a game and it took a couple of minutes to figure out how to invite him. Like I said, is serviceable but it can improve for sure. I don't think they'll make a revamp like that tho. So that's your choice.

All in all, I recommend this game. See you in the space battles.

Simply just one of the best card games ever made. Easy to learn and with a gradual skill curve allowing all players to learn and master the game in their own pace.

Some parts of the game might be a bit unbalanced, but rather than breaking the game it gives it flavor, teaching players different ways to tackle situations based on those unbalanced cards.

Have about 1,6k matches with the core set and have not gotten bored of it yet. With most other sets being as good as the core set this game is totally worth the money.

Very easy to learn - and lots of depth and complexity to master.
Was very pleased and surprised with this.
The physical card game is more fun (because of the social element) - but the auto math and calculations make for much faster streamlined play if you want to get good quickly, and experiment with ideas on your own.

Highly recommend for anyone who likes deck builders like Dominion, or even Hearthstone.

Very good and fun game, though I feel like the actual 'client' is kinda unpolished and clunky, takes getting used to a bit.

It's a solid port of a solid deckbuilding game. The app/port might not have any bells or whistles but it gets the job done.

Still one of the best deck building games. Solid mechanics, easy to pick up, lots of game variety. Like any deck game there's a lot of luck involved, but games are fast enough that when you're getting owned it's over quickly.

I have been playing this a lot with my friend. It really became one of my favorite card games to play. Every game is different! So fun. I recommend this!

Let me start by saying that I love the physical Star Realms game. Yet, I cannot remember the last time that I played a PC game that left such a terrible impression within the first hour or two. It's a usability nightmare. The interface seems almost intentionally designed to frustrate and be an obsticle to your ability to play the game. The fact that the difference between viewing a card and losing it forever (if it has a scraping ability) is single and double clicks means it's not a matter of if, but when you mistakenly throw away the best ship in your deck instead of double checking all its powers. And there's no undo button! Even when you're just playing against the AI. One little button that would do a massive amount of work to mitigate the frustrating interface, a feature that has been requested, as far as I can tell, as early as 2016 (with developer response).

Of course, that's just a QoL complaint compared to the fact that the interface DOESN'T EVEN FOLLOW THE ACTUAL RULES OF THE ORIGINAL GAME. It forcibly activates some of the powers that are explicitly stated to be completely AT WILL (in both whether you activate them at all, as well as when they are activated if you choose to do so) while leaving others be (correctly so). It's not even consistent about it, which makes it an even more glaring and inexplicable flaw. Another example is that for a base in which you must choose between two options when activiating its primary power, it forces you to use this power before allowing you to use the scraping ability of the base. This is not at all how this works in the real game. And while this is an oversight that could be forgiven, since there is no rational reason to do so in the physical version of the game, in the PC version there are often arbitrary constaints or win conditions placed on you throughout the campaign (like not using the primary powers of some bases) that make it a real issue.

I could go on with my complaints, but I think I've made my point. There's far too alarming an amount of flaws in just the first few hours of the game for me to have any good expectations of the rest of it.

Again, I would like to say that absolutely love the physical version of Star Realms. I play it quite reguarly with friends and family, and I highly recommend it. But the digital version of the game has been an actively unfun experience for me, and it enforces rules and habbits that are against the rules of the game. As such, I cannot recommend it.