---
title: 'Check Out: Shards of Order'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=MjOCSvhkDEw'
video_id: 'MjOCSvhkDEw'
date: 2026-07-14
duration_sec: 595
---

# Check Out: Shards of Order

> Source: [Check Out: Shards of Order](https://youtube.com/watch?v=MjOCSvhkDEw)

## Summary

Shards of Order is an upcoming card battler RPG from Awaken Realms, set in a world where reality is unraveling. Players guide three heroes—a soldier, a scholar, and an exile—each with unique mechanics, to restore order by collecting shards. The game features a time-based action system instead of traditional mana or action points, emphasizing efficient combos to delay enemy turns.

### Key Points

- **Game Overview** [00:08] — Shards of Order is a card battler RPG releasing July 28th, published by Awaken Realms (known for Tainted Grail).
- **Setting and Story** [01:24] — The world is falling apart as order turns to chaos. Players guide three heroes to gather shards of order and restore reality.
- **Shard of Life Mechanic** [02:05] — Restoring laws (like the shard of life) affects gameplay; the god of the realm may help but at a bizarre cost.
- **Party Composition** [02:46] — Three heroes: soldier (melee, rage mechanic), scholar (magic, debuffs, mana from allies' cards), exile (ranged, arrow quiver).
- **Time-Based Action System** [04:22] — Cards cost time units instead of mana. Enemies have timers; players aim to minimize time used to delay enemy actions.
- **Strategic Importance of Time** [05:04] — Items and abilities can increase enemy timers, allowing players to lock down enemies and prevent them from acting.
- **Redraw and Hand Management** [05:44] — Redrawing costs 3 time units, but reduces to zero if enough cards are used. Some cards have extra effects when last in hand.
- **Exploration and Events** [06:50] — Outside combat, players travel a set path with nodes. Cards influence dialogue options in text encounters.
- **Additional Mechanics** [08:09] — Crafting, god mechanics, and restoring laws (e.g., revive mechanic via shard of life) add depth.

### Conclusion

Shards of Order offers a fresh take on card battlers with its time-based action system and party synergy. The demo is available on Steam, and the full release is expected on July 28th.

## Transcript

this time bringing you a video on Shards of Order, an upcoming card battler RPG, which is admittedly not my normal cup of tea. However, there are a couple of one, but first, this is releasing on July 28th and it is being published by
Awaken Realms, who you might remember from Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon. this game, which I mean, did its job. I had no idea what this was beforehand. And while again, card battlers are not generally my thing, having played Slay
the Spire 2 a bit earlier this year and having a good time with that, and again, publishing it, got me a little curious and I decided to take a look at it because not only is this being published by Awaken Realms, but you may or may not
remember that prior to the Fall of Avalon, one of their more popular game releases was Tainted Grail: Conquest, itself a card-based RPG that reviewed super well, actually. And putting all that together, again, I just got curious
everybody else, and thus, here we are. So, probably worth a mention that if any of this is interesting to you, that you have a free demo over on Steam that you please, but the full version should be releasing in a couple weeks. Now, let's
talk about the game itself. So, this particular title it is somewhat focused on the RPG side of things in the sense that the game is set in a land where the laws of reality are coming undone. The world is quite literally falling apart
as order has fallen into chaos and the rules that governed how things work are no longer functioning. Your job, basically, is to guide three heroes, each with their own mechanics and everything, as one party, to defeat a
whole bunch of upsetting entities as you attempt to gather up the shards of order attempt to gather up the shards of order as it were to restore some of these laws and try to save what is left of this seemingly doomed world. You see that a
little bit in the available demo here via a shard of life that governs like the revive mechanic that we'll get to. Now, one thing that was kind of interesting that I didn't really see on display here specifically was that
apparently every time you restore these laws, something that's supposed to happen is that the god of this realm you, but it's also some sort of trickster god and that it is apparently
supposed to potentially help you, but usually at some bizarre cost. And again, but that's supposed to be a thing here. And that's all well and good, but now let's talk about our party. So, we are going to be playing a soldier, a
going to be playing a soldier, a scholar, and then an exile. So, sort of melee, magic, and ranged appropriately. And each of them has their own individual deck or hand, if you will, that is going to combine into the cards
encounters, you will level up, find equipment. Level ups are basically skill choices, which amounts to either upgrading or adding new cards to that then customize and choose what to take
take them all with you by any means. And then the equipment goes a little bit farther and usually enhances the mechanic for each character. So, the cards that you earn for each individual person unsurprisingly have their own
mechanics and themes that all sort of play and interact with each other. The soldier's is really simple. He earns a rage. However, a lot of his cards also have like extra effects if the enemy is afflicted by status effects that usually
come from the other two in your party. Your scholar on the other hand is all about debuffing, a little bit of healing. And as you play cards from the other characters, you will earn different types of mana, and the effect
depending on how much you've already played from the other two. The Exile's a little more interesting in the sense that she has an arrow quiver that has to be uh used more or less. So, most of her attacks are low cost, but they use
the quiver is empty, some of those cards have different effects, usually loading it back up. So, that's all well and good. But, truth be told, the most interesting mechanic that this particular game has going on is that
none of those cards cost you action points or mana, anything like that, but rather everything is a cost of increments of time. So, you probably noticed that all of your enemies have a little counter next to them, and that is
the number of time units until they do the thing that they are going to do, be that attack, buff, debuff, etc. Each of your cards has a time cost. Your job, then, is to set up the most efficient combos to deal the most damage possible
while using as little of the time as possible to both avoid incoming damage, but also reduce it on the enemy. Now, I will say, just from having played many of this is going already, and it's probably going to be, of course, doing
everything in your power to absolutely minimize the amount of turns that the enemy can take by any means necessary. So, even in this demo, there's an item that will increase the counter if you redraw with nothing in your hand. There
are abilities that just straight-up give them uh more time on their timer. And I would imagine that stuff is going to be incredibly important compared to can keep an enemy completely locked down, then they are functionally
useless. However, uh one thing that is going to limit you a little bit is naturally the RNG that comes with basically anything card-based in the sense that your hand is a bit limited. So, uh you can redraw said hand at a
cost of three time units, but if you use enough cards from your hand, that reduces to zero and you can redraw them for essentially free. There are mechanics that play into the redraw mechanic, however. Like, for instance,
there was an item that if I had no cards in my hand when I hit redraw, it would actually add time to enemies timers as an example. So, that one was, of course, pretty useful. And then there are cards who have an extra effect if they are the
last card in your hand, that kind of thing. There are also the usual things like discard mechanics, various debuffs that you can use like weakness or applying vulnerable to an enemy for reduced or increased incoming damage.
of all those status effects. And that, combined with equipment effects, is, of course, where a lot of the nuance to the individual gameplay and strategies come from in the sense that you're obviously going to build your deck a little bit,
characters level up, you pick and choose what cards you are upgrading or is actually in the deck that you're going to draw from. So, you've got a are doing, but I did also want to
mention that as with many of these games outside of these individual battles, interactions, namely in the form of these nodes as you'll be traveling along this little set path on a map, seemingly not in any sort of like roguelike sense.
This seems to be like a pretty well-defined map and experience. I don't know exactly how freeform it is or what the scope of it's going to be ultimately, but this seemed to be like set encounters and interactions and
interactions are defined a little bit by the cards you have available to you. These don't need to be in your deck to pop up in conversation, but based on the cards you have access to, you might have some different options for individual
little text encounters, which I thought was an interesting touch as well as the actual time mechanic. Because not only do you use these cards in combat, but they also come up in certain situations as like dialogue options more or less in
the text events, which again just an interesting little touch, but the rest of the game is more or less what I would expect going into a card battler and probably doesn't need too much of an explanation otherwise and I think that's
just about it. Um I think there is meant to be a couple of other mechanics that Like I mentioned, they talk about that god that's supposed to have some sort of mechanic associated with them. Some of the stuff over on their Steam page shows
what looks like a crafting mechanic of some sort. And then of course, what uh reestablishing all the laws and bringing those back into reality will likely do for the game play as well as those do also seem to have set effects. Like the
first one you get uh the life one uh helps you recover from being crippled as that character doesn't like game over you or anything, but rather they go down become revive cards and you have to use so many of those to pick them back up
and get them into the fight at an increased cost of your time naturally. So, I imagine there's plenty there for them to tweak and mess around with and the usual boss mechanics and the like, but again, I think that is pretty much
was just curious about this after learning who it is from and some of Awaken Realms past work and everything and hopefully you got something out of going to play the release version of this just because I am busy trying to
through before the back half of August and September start bringing a whole bunch more releases, but right now it's time to go over this. So, either way though, hope you enjoyed the video. If
you did, like, comment, subscribe, all that YouTube jazz. Let me know how you feel about this one down in the comment section below. But regardless of any of that, truly, just thank you so much for watching. I really do appreciate it. May
watching. I really do appreciate it. May you wander in wisdom and have an amazing you wander in wisdom and have an amazing day.