Developer studio Fardust, in partnership with publisher Awaken Realms, has unveiled a new trailer for their upcoming title Shards of Order while simultaneously putting to rest ongoing debates about the game’s genre classification. The developers have made a clear statement: despite featuring a card-based combat system, the project is definitively not a roguelike. This clarification comes as welcome news to players who have been following the game’s development and seeking to understand exactly what kind of experience awaits them when the title launches on Steam on July 28, 2025.
A Fresh Take on Card-Based Combat
The gaming industry has seen an explosion of card-based games in recent years, with many automatically falling into the roguelike or roguelite categories. Titles like Slay the Spire, Monster Train, and Inscryption have dominated this space, creating certain expectations among players whenever cards and combat are mentioned together. However, Fardust is taking a decidedly different approach with Shards of Order. The game promises a more traditional RPG experience with persistent progression, narrative-driven gameplay, and character development that carries through the entire adventure rather than resetting with each run.
This distinction is crucial for understanding the game’s appeal. While roguelikes offer randomized runs with permadeath mechanics, Shards of Order appears to focus on a crafted story experience where players build their decks and characters over time in a more linear fashion. The dark aesthetic and atmospheric presentation suggest influences from gothic fantasy and grimdark fiction, potentially appealing to fans of games like Darkest Dungeon while offering a fundamentally different gameplay loop.
Awaken Realms Brings Board Game Expertise to Digital Gaming
The involvement of Awaken Realms as publisher adds significant credibility to the project. Originally founded as a miniature painting studio in Poland, Awaken Realms has evolved into one of the most successful board game publishers in the world, known for creating deeply immersive tabletop experiences like Nemesis, Tainted Grail, and ISS Vanguard. Their campaigns on Kickstarter have consistently broken records, with Tainted Grail raising over $6 million from backers. The company’s transition into digital gaming represents a natural evolution, bringing their expertise in world-building, narrative design, and strategic gameplay to the video game medium.
This partnership between Fardust and Awaken Realms suggests that Shards of Order will likely feature the kind of rich lore and atmospheric storytelling that has become Awaken Realms’ trademark. Board game enthusiasts who have experienced their physical products will recognize the attention to detail and dark thematic elements that permeate their catalog. The publisher’s experience in creating complex strategic systems that remain accessible to newcomers could prove invaluable in balancing Shards of Order’s card-based mechanics.
What Players Can Expect This Summer
As the July 28 release date approaches, anticipation continues to build within the gaming community. The new trailer showcases the game’s distinctive visual style, combining hand-drawn card artwork with atmospheric environments that evoke a sense of foreboding and mystery. Early footage suggests deep deck-building mechanics, meaningful choices that affect the narrative, and challenging tactical encounters that will require careful planning and strategic thinking.
The decision to release on Steam provides Shards of Order with access to one of the largest PC gaming audiences in the world. With the platform’s robust discovery features and community tools, the game has the potential to find its niche among players seeking something different from the typical card game formula. As summer 2025 shapes up to be a competitive period for game releases, Shards of Order’s unique positioning as a card-based RPG that explicitly rejects roguelike conventions may help it stand out in an increasingly crowded marketplace.
Expert Opinion: The explicit distancing from roguelike mechanics represents a calculated move to attract RPG enthusiasts who may have been experiencing genre fatigue from the flood of deck-building roguelikes. With Awaken Realms’ proven track record in creating engaging narrative experiences and Fardust’s apparent commitment to persistent progression systems, Shards of Order could potentially carve out a new subgenre that bridges traditional RPG storytelling with strategic card-based combat, appealing to players who want meaningful character development without the repetitive nature of run-based gameplay.