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Full Steam announcements and update articles for this title.
We’ve made it! Shards of Order is finally out on Steam, and you can get your hands on it!
Please take a moment to sit back and celebrate the launch with us! Let's stay with our dedicated release trailer:
Chances are, some of you folks are seeing our game for the first time and wondering what we're all about. Worry not, we've got you covered!
Shards of Order is a dark fantasy RPG (yes, not a roguelike) that throws out the rulebook for deckbuilding & card-based combat. How do we do that? There are no turns and no mana points. Every enemy acts on a visible countdown, and every card you play winds those counters down, shifting the whole flow of the fight. We love card-based combat, yet wanted to implement something unique to the genre - hopefully it works for you!
You'll have to master the art of creating a perfect deck, especially considering there are three heroes, but only one shared set of cards. Every card you add affects the drawing odds. Will you build around one main hero and stack the deck in their favor, or spread the strength across the whole party and keep everyone in the fight? Your call.
There are three distinct characters available, each with multiple playstyles, their own skill trees, and a personal arc. This is a full RPG underneath the cards: level up, customize equipment, make dialogue choices, and pass skill checks. Weapons and armor aren't just stat sticks. They define each hero's playstyle and can even inject unique cards straight into your shared deck, so every gear decision is also a deckbuilding decision. Layer the right gear across all three, and your party starts working like one organism.
The game takes place in a hopeless world where nothing stays dead. The ancient Laws that once held life, death, and time in place have been stolen or shattered. What’s left is a world where identity fractures and the dead refuse to stay buried. A handful of survivors set out to put it back together, one broken Law at a time. You’re their leader, and restoring Order is up to you - If you find it worth saving.
This might come as a surprise for many of you, seeing all the price predictions people have been making before the release. We chose to go for a rather small price, not because we think the game is not worth it, but to allow it to be enjoyed by as many people as possible. That's what we care about most.
If you're enjoying the game and want to give us an extra boost of support, you can grab the Supporter Pack as DLC. It contains the Soundtrack (both original tracks and licensed songs by Dzivia), a Digital Artbook, a Digital Treasure Map (all accessible from within the game), plus the Print-and-Play Tarot Cards!
Prefer to get everything at once, altogether? The Supporter Edition bundles the base game together with the Supporter Pack at a 5% discount.
Either way, the Supporter content is completely optional and exists purely as a way to show extra support if you feel so inclined (and pick up some cool extras in return)!
As announced in one of our previous posts, Shards of Order plays great on Steam Deck! Here are the exact details:
In combat: ~55 FPS on battery, 60+ FPS when plugged in.
On the map: 90 FPS when plugged in (Steam Deck's max), with occasional drops to 60 FPS during map events. Also, 60 FPS on the map on battery.
When things are calm, and characters are idling in combat, we get a steady 60 FPS
FPS dips a bit when animations and particles trigger in combat, but it still stays above 40 FPS. This is promising, especially considering more optimizations are yet to come.
All inputs work correctly!
After the Steam review, we received the "Playable" Steam Deck rating. The only thing keeping us from being "Verified" is that, in some cases, some in-game text might be a bit hard to read. Other than that, everything should work well!
Rest assured, we want to make everything perfectly readable as much as we want that green checkmark, so we'll do our best to improve font sizes for Steam Deck in the near future! :D
Ahead of release, we sent out a batch of review keys so creators could check the game out and share their thoughts with you before launch. It was genuinely so fun to watch them play (and sometimes struggle a bit more than we expected!). Here are a few videos if you want to check them out!
Beyond the review keys themselves, we also put together our own Collector's Edition of the game and shared it with media and content creators. Take a look at what's inside the box, along with their reactions!
We started working on Shards of Order in November of 2024. Back then, we referred to it as Project Bell and had little more than an idea of a dark world filled with scary creatures and our shared fatigue of the rougelike genre. And now here we are, almost 2 years later, finally seeing the thing we worked so hard on come out into the world. It’s a very satisfying and strange feeling. Especially when you realize that everything started as a bunch of simple sketches like these:
And now we're here, on the release day! It's been a long time coming, but we couldn't have made it without the positive feedback of people playing the game throughout the development process. Out of those, we especially want to thank our small group of playtesters who bore with us through numerous rebalance patches, save file invalidations, and all the other things that come with early development. Seriously, thank you!
The game is 100% ready, and we’re satisfied with how it turned out, but we’ve still got tons of scrapped content that we don't want to just collect dust on our disks, so bit by bit, we’re planning to add more content into the game: items, monsters, quests, and other stuff. Obviously, the scale of that will largely depend on how well the game does.
Aside from that, expect balance patches to come through. We’re not sure how well people will handle the difficulty presented by the game, but we intended for the game to be difficult; we’ll observe and adapt quickly through player feedback.
Observe our Steam updates to know what we’re cooking up!
Now, aside from everything else, to celebrate the release of the game, we implemented an essential mechanic in any deckbuilder game that often goes unappreciated: hand reorganization!
You can now move your cards around in your hand with RMB to organize them, a truly impressive endeavor. Behold!
Enough of all this boring stuff, go ahead, launch the game, and make sure you tell us what you think about it. Whether it be through the review system or simply talking about it, any feedback is much appreciated! You can find links to our socials below, so you know where to find us!
Now, we hope you have a great time with our game 😀
By the way, look at this marvelous cake our HR department cooked up for us! I assure you, it tasted just as good as it looks. Yep, tasted - past tense. It was gone in seconds.
Stay safe! Fardust team
Q&A form: https://forms.gle/RjVhs3oSfyjRQtrH9. Join Our Socials: TikTok, Blue Sky, Discord, x.com.
Just one last stretch before the release, right?! We're excited, and we hope the same goes for you! The clock is ticking, and the countdown is finally coming to a close. Speaking of countdowns, here's our final pre-release trailer for you!
Now, we had some important questions regarding Shards of Order coming from you - is it a rogueLIKE? Is it a rogueLITE?
Shards of Order is an RPG with card battles; it has a full story and an experience points-based progression system. When you level up, you unlock new cards or upgrade the ones you already have.
There is no progression reset, no runs, no random encounters, etc. You follow a coherent story, you encounter NPCs, you make choices, you grow in power. Just like in any other RPG, you simply hit your enemies using cards.
You can immerse yourself in the game, the story, dialogues, item descriptions, and take it slowly. You won’t lose your progress, you won’t lose your build. You can mix and match your cards, memories, and equipment to try out new options.
Did we mention that we have a respec feature right from the start? Some people miss it, so we added a big prompt on the side of the skill tree panel so you won’t forget.
That’s all for today. Remember, the release date is just around the corner - Shards of Order releases on the 28th of July. Tell your friends, wishlist it on Steam, spread the word!
Stay safe! Fardust team
Q&A form: https://forms.gle/RjVhs3oSfyjRQtrH9.
Only 11 days until Shards of Order releases, but we’re still hard at work improving and fixing things to make the game as enjoyable as possible. It's mostly bugfixes, but we’re also adding content, changing sidequests around, improving wording, and all that good stuff, which makes the game a much more seamless experience.
A large portion of our week was filled with us watching influencers, streamers, and reviewers having a go at our game, all the while noting down and fixing whatever we noticed could still be improved. It was a very reassuring experience because… well… They really enjoyed their time while playing our game! This was especially nice because we didn’t launch any sponsorships or stuff like that; we simply sent people keys and gifts and told them just to do and say whatever they felt like.
Aside from just feeling nice, it also gave us a boost of confidence in the game's technical state. While there were some bugs, none of them were too serious, and all could be fixed rather quickly. The game runs smoothly on different gaming setups, and we couldn't be happier with it. Here are some videos of some of them having a good ol time (but you should beware of spoilers):
If you don't like talking, we really recommend this beautiful ASMR 4K gameplay video:
We also finally had time to implement a feature we’ve been aching to have but just haven't had the time. Conversation portraits!
No longer will you have to use your imagination to visualize our NPCs; every one of them will receive a custom portrait, which will change during dialogues depending on who’s currently talking during a conversation. It’s a small addition, but we hope it will help you immerse yourself in the story and make it easier to follow.
Here's how that looks:
Below, we attach some of our artists' favorite portraits:
There have been some questions about available language options for Shards of Order, so officially, here’s a list of languages that will be available on release day: English, German, French, Chinese Simplified, and Polish.
We hope to add more languages post-release. We will inform you about new options when and if they arrive.
It's been a while, but someone asked a question on our Q&A form (link at the bottom of the post).
Someone asked, “Are you planning in any way to add co op to your game because this seems like a game me and my friends would play?”
No, we’re not planning on releasing a co-op mode for Shards Of Order; it's a big technical undertaking and would make this game significantly more complicated to develop. It’s not something that our small team can handle currently.
That’s all for now, folks. We go back to work. Have a great one!
Stay safe! Fardust team
Q&A form: https://forms.gle/RjVhs3oSfyjRQtrH9. Join Our Socials: TikTok, Blue Sky, Discord, x.com.
Those last few weeks are especially important because, as we approach the final stretch before the release, we focus mostly on little things that may not make a huge difference in the game on their own, but added together show our love and care for the project. It's hard work, but it really pays off as the game can change its feel completely in a matter of days.
Right now, we're deep into polishing Steam Deck support, so you can just sit back and enjoy a flawless experience on release day. We're still waiting on Valve's official checkmark, but here's the deal: it's already running great, and there's even more firepower coming before launch, with more optimizations on its way!
In combat: ~55 FPS on battery, 60+ FPS when plugged in.
On the map: 90 FPS when plugged in (Steam Deck's max), with occasional drops to 60 FPS during map events. Also, 60 FPS on the map on battery.
When things are calm, and characters are idling in combat, we get a steady 60 FPS
FPS dips a bit when animations and particles trigger in combat, but it still stays above 40 FPS. This is promising, especially considering more optimizations are yet to come.
All inputs work correctly!
I mean, look at this photo below. Doesn't Shards of Order belong to Steam Deck?!
Just to get you folks into the mood, as well as shed some more light on the world of the game, we've prepared a special Bosses & Lore Trailer. Grab a cup of sinners' guilt to drink and enjoy.
This week, we sent a bunch of gifts to various streamers and creators, some of which had already arrived. Seeing them with a smile as they unboxed them was a very wholesome experience for us. They have access to a pre-release version of the game, which they can stream or record if they please, though the experience might not be as good as it will be on the 28th.
The gift came in a cool book-shaped package and included a set of tarot cards, a set of character pins, a diorama, and a few other small things.
Here’s a video of one of the lucky 500ish people who got it! (you might want to skip to 5:50 to see the unboxing, as the Steam doesn't care about our timestamp in the link :D)
Relatively early in our development, we decided that we had to include battles that have heavy story elements to them. Not just another filler encounter, but either a little plot of its own, or a supplement to the quest you are following at the moment.
You will find a great example early in the Purged Village, where we are met with a choice: save a Herbalist or a Miller. If we choose to save the Herbalist, we will actually do it in the form of a special fight. Herbalist tied to a burning stake and a group of enemies. We have to be quick to defeat the fanatics before she burns to a crisp.
We have more combat encounters like that in the game, and we really hope you will enjoy them as much as we enjoyed making them.
Our playtests are still underway, and the lovely volunteers are hard at work testing, giving feedback, and helping us improve the game. As a result of that, we’ve realized that we might have gone a bit easy on the difficulty, so we’re in the middle of ramping up some of the numbers to hopefully give players more satisfaction from beating fights.
That’s all for today; we go back to work to do some more of that Polish polish (pun intended, sorry, we are tired).
Stay safe! Fardust team
Q&A form: https://forms.gle/RjVhs3oSfyjRQtrH9.
Join Our Socials: TikTok, Blue Sky, Discord, x.com.
The release is looming closer and closer, and the game is really taking full shape now. Our last post obviously didn’t cover every change we’ve made throughout the last few months, so this one is gonna show off some of the things we didn't mention.
A major balancing factor is tying the maximum shields you can gain to your current equipment. A major factor in that is obviously the armor; aside from granting special passives like in the demo, each of them also comes with a maximum amount of shields that you can gain while wearing it. This makes sense from both a logical standpoint, as well as really helps us with balancing the game. We really wanted to make shields persist instead of expiring, and keeping them that way while also giving them an unlimited cap was unsustainable in the long run, so we got rid of the latter.
While we’re on the topic of new armor pieces, we might as well show you how some of them look now. Some combinations are so good that we tend to ignore the effect of synergies just to look cooler. Take a look!
We also want to give you a quick update on development and preparations for release. The playtests are up and running at full force, both internally and externally. We really want to thank everyone who’s been participating throughout the development process; this game wouldn't be the same without y'all.
Stay safe! Fardust team
Q&A Form: https://forms.gle/RjVhs3oSfyjRQtrH9 Join Our Socials: TikTok, Blue Sky, Discord, x.com.
It’s been some time since we last posted here, and we have some explaining to do. The last two months certainly haven’t been easy; we’ve had a couple of internal issues, but we’ve managed through them. Now, we’re nearing the last stretch of the development cycle for Shards of Order, and in celebration of that, we’ve decided to take a little time off to talk about what has changed and showcase a few things.
First and foremost, the one thing everyone has been waiting for and the reason you clicked on this post - the release date. We’re stoked to announce that:
It certainly has been a journey, and to finally be able to see the finish line gives us a much-needed boost of motivation. With that out of the way, let's focus on the game itself and talk about some of the changes that have happened.
When reviewing gameplay from people who played our demo and participated in our playtests, we noticed one significant detail: the players didn't pay much attention to their characters' dying. While it worked nicely in the short, sweet demo, playing with this mindset through dozens of fights quickly became boring and unengaging.
We’ve given the player more options to maneuver and protect their party, all the while substantially increasing the punishment for letting their party members die by introducing the fracture system.
Whenever you Revive any of your party members, it puts a strain on your party's minds, adding a fracture stack. Each stack causes your redraws to deal 6 damage to each of your party members, up to 3 stacks, at which point each redraw costs you 18 damage. This puts pressure on the player: do they want to revive and tank the damage, or would they rather have a bunch of useless revive cards that make dealing damage harder? It is also accompanied by a badass visual cue that ramps up the more stacks you have. Take a look!
Another notable change involves the redraw economy. Previously, a redraw cost you 3 time, and that number went down each time you played any cards. This unfortunately came with an unfortunate side effect. As one of you in the discussions pointed out, this system meant that cheaper cards were way more effective at getting your hand full again. Why would anyone choose expensive cards if you could just build a deck out of cheap cards and redraw your hand for less time, delaying the enemy actions?
We fixed it by tying the redraw cost to the actual passage of time. When you play a card that costs 3, it reduces the redraw timer by 3. Alongside that change, we also increased the redraw time to 4. This does a couple of things. First of all, it increases the value of expensive cards in comparison to the cheap ones, because while being more powerful themselves, they are also more effective at getting rid of the redraw time. Secondly, it encourages the player to engage with the positioning mechanics. Moving your party members costs 1 time, and that also gets retracted from the redraw cost, which gives the player more opportunities to make strategic choices. Do I want to play this 1-cost card, or do I want to reposition and potentially trigger a passive ability?
We had to make some sacrifices we had previously highlighted to ensure we released the game on time and in a balanced state. Unfortunately, we’ve reduced the number of playable characters to only 3: The Exile, The Soldier, and the Scholar.
The other two characters: The Warlock and The Bladedancer, were all but implemented; however, coming up with builds that make sense, are satisfying, and don't break the balance of the game for all five characters was proving to be extremely difficult for our small team, so we had to scale down, and decided to instead more of focus our efforts on the story, and really flushing out the three base characters.
Hope you’re not too mad about that; don't worry too much, though; they’re still in the game as parts of the story, and you will get the chance to play them.
As a fallout of that change, since we knew that the players' party is now always a team of three, we were able to design a new skill tree around that fact. Now you can adjust the skills of all 3 characters at once! Here's how that looks:
Alongside all of the content changes, we also focused a lot on the UX side of things. The demo has always felt slow and sluggish as far as combat goes. Having to wait each time you play a card before playing the next one was the main culprit. We took time to improve how combat and playing cards feels, and we think we did a pretty damn good job at it. Each card you play now gets added to a queue, so you can play your cards, end your turn, and sit back and watch to see how things turn out. This is also accompanied by quicker transitions between animations with fewer delays overall. Take a look:
With the release date nearing, we’re still looking for people to test and help us flush out the game, get rid of any lurking bugs, and help with the balancing. If this is something you’re interested in and want to get a copy of the game for free as a bonus, feel free to register via the link below:
We’ve received a lot of feedback and iterated through a couple of different versions, all to finally reach this point. We’re really happy with how the game is turning out, and we’re sure it will be worth your time and money once it finally comes out. The things we mentioned here are simply the most systemic and gameplay-impactful changes; we’ve got dozens of unique enemies, encounters, quests, and stories prepared. Again, sorry for not keeping you up to date for the past two months; we’ve had a lot of work (we still do), but we’re feeling good and keeping the pace. Thank you for sticking with us, and as always…
Stay safe! Fardust team
Q&A form: https://forms.gle/RjVhs3oSfyjRQtrH9
So, the main storyline of our game has been implemented; however, it still needs polishing and lots and lots of testing. If you’ve missed the chance to join the playtests the last time, this is your opportunity to hop aboard and help us improve the game based on your feedback.
This time, we’re looking for opinions regarding recent changes we’ve made based on the previous round of playtests and internal testing. Most notably, we rebalanced the difficulty, which, we’re hoping, will make the experience less frustrating. We still want the game to be difficult, but not to the point where every fight requires the player to use 100% of their potential, and that's kinda hard to do without a fresh outlook on the game. We’re also looking for any broken builds that could make the laughably easy, so try to go wild on the deckbuilding aspect.
Register via the link below:
https://forms.gle/P4fMK4natg39ZXABA
As you might have known, last week we were present at the PAX East gaming convention in Boston, and we’ve had a chance to show our game off to people in person. It was a very refreshing experience to see first-time players leave with smiles on their faces. Here are some photos we took. Enjoy:
Thank you to everyone who came and checked out our booth, decided to join our playtests, or already participated in the previous rounds. You’re the ones who make this possible and so very worth it.
Stay safe! Fardust team
Q&A form
https://forms.gle/RjVhs3oSfyjRQtrH9
Join Our Socials: TikTok, Blue Sky, Discord, x.com.
From March 26 through 29, our representatives will be attending the PAX East gaming convention happening in Boston, US. Over there, you will be able to play an exclusive build of the game, which we prepared to best show off the strengths of our game and different mechanics not yet present in the demo. If you’re planning to attend, come by and say hello. We’d love to meet you at the Games from Poland booth, No. 15078. Here's the event's main site if you’re interested in finding out more!
https://east.paxsite.com/en-us.html
We’re 95% done with the base storyline and are currently polishing the game, fixing the bugs, improving our UI and UX, and adding side quests. Regarding that, there's going to be big news coming in early April, as we’re gonna be comfortable sharing the official release date of Shards of Order and announcing some other rather exciting news.
We’re also planning a second round of playtests after addressing the issues plaguing the first round and the addition of new areas.
And that's about all. We’re going to lock ourselves back in the shed to cook up more awesome things for y'all. Have a splendid rest of the week, and as always…
Stay safe! Fardust team
Q&A form
Last time we posted was around a month ago, and what a month it has been. We’re finishing the last area of the game and designing the final boss, and I wish we could just show everything off, but we’d rather you play the game and experience it all by yourself. We’re not really implementing any new mechanics at this stage and are just pumping out tons of content, which we don't wanna spoil too much, but we also don’t wanna go radio silent. So one of our designers prepared a short read about some of the tools we give the player that allow them to shape and react to the world around them, as well as some other stuff. Enjoy.
There's more to cards than meets the eye. When browsing the Skill Tree, you'll notice that apart from different effects and keywords, some cards also contain Attributes. This means that these cards have a vital role outside of combat and boost your character's abilities during map exploration and story events. You can recognize these cards by the Attribute Icon in the top right corner. Every Hero has 2 Attributes that can be invested in.
First of all, we have "Card Checks" that you could've already seen, if you played the demo. Some story events let you play cards to unlock additional interactions. Only cards with Attributes are used during these events, so you'll always know which cards are special beforehand. Be mindful that using your Attributes will not always guarantee a "better" result. It's simply a way for your characters to do things their way. People will remember your choices.
Secondly, we have passive "Skill Checks" that are hidden from the player. If you have unlocked a required number of cards with the same Attribute, some story events will contain more dialogue, information, and/or options. The simplest example is Perception – if it's on a high enough level, your character may notice a hidden item, making it available to be picked up.
Now for the main topic of our last month's shenanigans - playtests. Here are the results of people playing our game for the last month:
This aspect was quite controversial, with some contradicting opinions, but overall, people enjoyed the atmosphere, choices, items, and the overall map size, and disliked the readability, lack of guidance, and large amounts of backtracking while visiting certain npc’s and areas of interest.
This part is something we pretty much nailed, 75% of players thought that the progression pace was just right. The game was not overwhelming the players with too many choices at once, all the while providing enough content to keep the players engaged with the progression systems.
People mainly enjoyed the time mechanics, synergies, and tactical planning, which is complemented by allowing the player respec the skill points they acquired at any point in the game. The map skillchecks mechanics we explained at the beginning of this post were also fan favourites. They disliked how some mechanics introduced by new enemies introduced difficulty spikes, and how the characters that are not in the active party didn't gain experience.
Testers complained about basic fights being a bit too long. The unique fights were also difficult, but as we desired for each hard encounter, the players had to adapt their decks and form unique strategies. Some of them, however, didn't stick around and decided that the game was too hard.
The general feeling here was that the game was difficult, but not unfair, meaning that every obstacle was beatable as long as the player made up a plan and tried to counter whatever it was that troubled them. This is just as we wanted, but we still think that balancing the game to make it a bit easier is a good decision. This won't happen by simply twisting the numbers, but by allowing players to manipulate reality itself. As mysterious as it sounds, we don't want to spoil it for you. That way, people that dont enjoy the deckbuilding mechanics can still enjoy the RPG elements, all the while providing hardcore players with the satisfaction of not giving in to the games attemps to lure them into borrowing the power that they don't fully understand.
The exploration part, which had the community divided, is something we’re not too concerned about; we want the player to feel lost while playing the game, experience the atmosphere of navigating a strange world, and make sense of it. We also don't want to clutter the screen with too much UI, popups, exclamation points, and the like. We did, however, decide to make it so that the points of interest are more visible on the map by making them stand out more from the elements around them.
Lastly, the experience part, we decided to make it so that all the characters gain experience regardless of them beeing in an active party or not.
Now for my favourite part - showing off some of what our amazing artists made, featuring the most freaky, mind-bending creatures they pull out from god knows where. This time though, we will not provide much context regarding their origin, so as not to spoil the game too much. Tell us what you make of them!
There are many more where that came from, and that’s not even featuring any of the main story bosses, which are the main focus of our development process. We’re really putting work into them and making them the best they can be, and no, we won't show them in these posts 👹
Thank you, everyone, for playtesting our game. It gave us a much-needed insight and a fresh dose of feedback that will help us shape the game into a better version of itself, and we hope to see you in the next round of tests.
Sorry for the lack of posts this month. The playtests, and what is essentially full-steam development, really filled up our schedules and didn't leave much time for talking. That being said, our schedules aren’t getting any lighter, so I can't promise that the next post will be released next week. We will post whenever an open window shows itself.
Have a fantastic rest of the week and as always…
Stay safe! Fardust team
Q&A form: https://forms.gle/RjVhs3oSfyjRQtrH9.
As mentioned in our previous posts, the development is progressing well, but as the playtime keeps increasing, there’s more room for holes, balance issues, and those pesky bugs. And so, the time has come, when we come asking for your help. If this game is something you’re passionate about and want to help out with, we implore you to sign up for our playtesting program.
Before the full release, we’re planning to conduct around 4 playtests, each targeting a different area of the game. The first test will begin sometime next week and will target the shrike’s nest and the village. We’re starved for other people’s opinions and have done all the testing we can, so the game is stable enough that it won't cause frustration and accurately represents the direction we’re heading in.
We’re looking for feedback on our lore. We want you to try different builds and share your input on balance and difficulty. We want feedback on our UX and the parts that cause frustration when playing, while reporting any bugs you find along the way. Anything that you think could be done better, we want to know about it.
We’re deeply grateful to everyone in this community for trying to help our game be the best it can, and your efforts won't go unappreciated. The playtesters will receive the keys for the full game, and the most active ones will receive gifts from us as a token of our gratitude.
We wish you a fantastic rest of the week and, as always…
Stay safe! Fardust team
Q&A form: https://forms.gle/RjVhs3oSfyjRQtrH9.
The game is growing at a steady pace, and it constantly impacts how we see things; it challenges our initial systems and established foundations. This post will explore one of the problems we faced as the playtime increased. Other than that, one of our designers wanted to share their thought process when designing the items for our game. Enjoy!
We were initially super happy with how our characters required players to build up combos over a few redraws. Constantly thinking five moves ahead to maximise the effect of some cards was fun in the demo because it was short. When you have to fight 10 or 15 battles against minor enemies to reach a new area, the process becomes very tedious and tiring. The most irritating thing was how complicated some of the cards were.
That’s why we decided to adjust our approach. We made some of the cards easier to understand, as their effects are simpler yet still effective. We reduced the number of requirements on cards. Situations in which a player could not play a chosen card because they didn’t have a certain status or didn’t have enough cards in hand are now much rarer. With that said, the game's difficulty stayed the same, as each battle was rebalanced. It’s just easier to see how to execute a satisfying combo. At the end of the day, we want to deliver a challenging experience, while making it as satisfying and enjoyable to the player as possible.
Here are a few examples of the changes we made:
In this card, we removed the requirement for the upgraded effect. While the previous version motivated players to synergize with other cards, it turned out to be unnecessary, as almost none of the playtesters wanted to use that card.
On the other hand, here we changed the card much more drastically, but at the same time, the result for the player is very similar. On top of that, the card uses the Soldier mechanic much more efficiently. The first card was overcomplicated and simply not fun to use.
There are also some examples of completely new cards coming as a result of these changes:
From the very beginning, we wanted our game to be a true RPG experience. That's why we decided items need to feel essential to combat itself.
Items are divided into three categories:
Weapons – defining each character’s offensive playstyle
Armors – providing mostly defensive, passive effects
Memories – universal items that can be equipped by any hero, offering more general passive bonuses
Early in development, we considered an approach you may know from ARPG games: a huge number of items, frequent replacements, and a constant hunt for something with slightly better numbers. We quickly abandoned that idea, and instead we chose to give items real weight. There are fewer of them, but every single item has a clear purpose and meaning. Each one can significantly change how the game is played — and to truly unlock their potential, players are encouraged to adapt their decks around the items they use.
The most game-changing items are weapons. If you’ve played the demo, you already know how different the experience is when using the Rusted Greatsword compared to the Crimson Greatsword. But let’s take a look at another example - blades of our new character, The Reaver. With his starting blades, The Weaver can choose between two stances: Short Stance, granting 12 Shields, and Long Stance, granting 6 Strength. This allows the player to constantly decide when it’s better to defend and when to go on the offensive.
However, equipping Lifesteal Blades changes this dynamic completely. In Short Stance, The Weaver heals himself based on the damage dealt. In Long Stance, that healing is transferred to his allies instead. With this weapon, healing cards may no longer be necessary in the deck at all. While it doesn’t allow for damage as serious as the starting blades, it enables a completely different playstyle, supporting, but at the same time, being offensive.
This is exactly what we aim for with our item system — fewer items, but each one opening up new strategies and meaningful choices. True power will depend on how well players synergize their equipment with not only cards, but also other items equipped on other characters.
To wrap this up, we have a little sneak peek. From our earlier post, you may remember the General of the Black Wing Legion and his epic green sword. Imagine how cool it will be to take it from him ;)
Hope you enjoyed this little read, and maybe even learned something. As we mentioned, the balance changes are pretty drastic, but we think this is a step in the right direction. Tell us what you think about it. This is a bold step, and we’re in dire need of feedback.
We’re super hyped about how well you all received our last lore dive post. It was super fun to make, and more will definitely be coming, so stay tuned for that.
We wish you a fantastic weekend and, as always…
Stay safe! Fardust team
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This week we prepared something new, a post dedicated entirely to exploring the worldbuilding and lore around our game. It will serve as both an interesting read for you, as well as a tool for us developers to get feedback, spot inconsistencies and improve the quality of our lore. They’re not meant to spoil the story of the game, but to help unfold and wrap our heads around the outlandish world of Shards Of Order. These types of posts will now be a recurring theme that will sometimes come out in between our regular devlog updates. Tell us what you think about posts like these, and enjoy!
The world did not end in a bang; it simply began to silently unravel itself, slowly dissolving into a sea of nothingness. The Laws that govern the world are gone. Were they stolen? Shattered? Who knows. The Final Sin, for which all creation has to suffer.
There is no hunger, no time, nor even death, and yet… the world has not fully vanished. Even in all this bleakness, there are still those who fight on. Those who see the spark of hope in the darkness of apocalypse and remain steadfast. They gather around the few remaining places of relative calm and stability, pockets of normality among the sea of chaos.
But these sanctuaries are not safe either. The crumbling reality affects the survivors, pushing them towards the brink of sanity. Needless violence and fanatical beliefs are a new norm… but the alternative? What happens if you manage to find yourself in the dark, outside of the few safe havens?
First, you will most likely lose your way in the never-ending wasteland of bare rock and mist, and that's only if you're lucky enough to not get mauled by a beast. You will slowly but surely forget about your past life, who you were, and who you are. You will become one of the Lost. Your flesh will show the sign of you losing your identity, becoming grey as the mist you wandered for what felt like forever, your face morphing into an unrecognizable blob of hard skin.
Soon enough, living becomes a curse, at which point you’re too far gone to even notice. You wander for years without aging, without dying, without the mercy of an end. Food turns to ash, wounds never close, and pain becomes eternal. As you lose more and more sense of self, your identity erodes and a monster is born.
As time passes you might eventually merge with other beasts roaming the land, forming a mass of mussel and bone, an unholy hybrid of pure horror as you dissolve and become one, or turn into something far worse.
That fate eventually comes for everyone… unless someone finds a way to save this dying world.
Thanks for reading & stay safe! Fardust team
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The main story of the game is more than half way finished. We’re making content at a very good pace and are already expecting the game to go well past the 10 hour of gameplay mark. However the most important thing is that this time is not filled up by repetitive fetch quests, and boring stories. As the game grew we came up with new ideas, expanded our tools and I personally think we created something that will end up being worth your time. This post aims to share some of those ideas with you, and of course show off some new baddies as well. Enjoy!
It was important for us to design Quests that offer a variety of interactions and outcomes. We don’t want to be limited by dialogue options – your gameplay performance may push the quest in an unpredictable direction as well. Lose a fight and you might not get another chance to try. Succeed in a skill check and find out that you shouldn’t have tried so hard. Think of winning a friendly arm wrestling contest by accidentally ripping someone’s arm off.
Don’t worry, though, as the player agency is still the most important thing on our minds. Your intent and choices matter, so does the context of the situation. Then again, in a world where laws shaping the world are broken, both short-term and long-term consequences might be different than you expect.
Anyway, here is a graph depicting one of our short side quests:
Due to the nature of our game, the amount of UI elements on the world map is significant already. In order to reduce the clutter and increase immersion, we decided not to implement any kind of quest markers. Instead, we opted for a solution that rewards paying attention to the game world.
That also includes a less direct Quest Log, which is actually a Journal where the protagonist tracks what happened on your adventure. It doesn't tell you what to do, but stores important information and suggests possible solutions.
With that out of the way, it's time we reveal the next major faction present in Shards of Order - The Marina.
The marina are people that live in the fishing village, the area boasts a number of fish like creatures, aquatic monsters and mechanics that focus on confusing the players. We’re gonna show off some of those mechanics in later posts but we can assure you that you won't be bored, this area will leave you scratching your head while you sleep.
Perhaps one of the coolest designs in this faction is the Facestealer.
As the name suggests its main shtick will be the ability to steal the faces of our beloved party members. However we’re still working out the artistic part of all that so you’re gonna have to wait a little to see the visuals of that happening.
As we mentioned in the beginning of this post, a run will definitely go over the 10 hour mark, this is good news, but can pose some challenges as we are a small team so testing and most importantly balance is gonna get harder and harder as we add more content. The presence of playtests will be crucial as we REALLY don't want to release an unfinished game in early access. We aim to respect the time players will spend with our game and make it the best possible.
We already hinted at this possibility in our previous posts, but this time it's real. If you’re interested in helping us make this game the best it can possibly be, make sure to listen in on our communication channels (this includes here), as an official announcement will be coming soon.
Sorry for not releasing a post last week, our work hours were still kinda fragmented from the holidays and some organizational stuff, but we’re back to full throttle. We wish y'all a fantastic weekend, we’ll see you next week, and as always…
Stay safe! Fardust team
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Welcome to 2026, let's hope it treats us all well, with all the shenanigans going on around the world, that's about all us mortals can do. Whatever happens, It's time for us to get back into the flow, and start making cool shit. This time we’re here to show off some mechanics that were already teased in our previous posts in greater detail. Let's get started.
We teased the crafting system in a recent post, where we said that we would decide whether to go with it or not, well we decided. We’ve implemented a basic crafting system that allows the player to learn recipes and create different useful things.
The craftables will include things like healing bells, different potions that will help us during our battles, quest items, upgraded weapons and armor. All of this adds another layer of progression, and it feels natural, it makes sense for the characters in the game to use whatever they can get their hands on to increase their chances of survival.
We created this cool sandstorm arena. We initially created it, because we thought it would look cool, but we quickly realized that it would be cool to integrate it into the mechanics of the battle. Like for example, every x amount of cooldown the arena will deal 1 dmg to all heroes unless they have an amulet that protects them.
This idea will eventually lead to other weather events, like ash fall and rain, but that's for the future. Either way, when we make more, you can bet we’re gonna show it off.
So, around 40 people shared their feedback on the Scholar and general character design and it wasn't that surprising to us when the newly designed scholar from previous posts did not receive a single vote. You clearly want the scholar to appear more human than monster, and that's fine with us. By far the most popular design was design nr. 2.
Now, as we mentioned before this is probably not his final version either. We will use your feedback and what we learned to make a new version of him that will hopefully sit right with most of you. We can’t make everyone happy, but we sure as hell don't want to make everyone angry either!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the character's design, your feedback was very deliberate and some of you conveyed your feelings very clearly to us. We’ll do our best to make it right with you.
The next couple of months are going to be intense. As we mentioned in one of our previous posts, we plan to finish writing the main story of the game by the end of march. We still think it's possible, but we have a lot of work ahead of us. Regardless of the amount of work we’ll try to keep these updates going every week as usual, until next time.
Stay safe! Fardust team
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With the Christmas festivities behind us, we decided to take this time to reminisce. Shards of Order has been in development since around December last year, after a rather unspectacular launch of our previous game - Dragon Eclipse. This post will be a bit different and quite a bit longer, as we’re going to show you all the progress we made over this year, and the different interactions of the game we went through as we developed Shards Of Order. Strap in and let's travel back!
Initially, Shards of Order or what we called it internally “Project Bell”, had a different combat system. We never intended on having an energy system, but each of our characters had their own stamina pool, each card cost a certain amount of stamina, and some of them regenerated the stamina pool, there was a rest action too which was the most reliable way to recover stamina. Which now in retrospect was basically like the energy system but each of the characters had their own energy pool, the only difference being that the stamina was supposed to be very dynamic, with it constantly going up and down.
The thing we stayed true to though is the artistic vision and the difficulty of the game. We looked for inspiration in games like Fear & Hunger, the Dark Souls series, Darkest Dungeon and Kingdom Death. We really liked the idea of a difficult, dark themed card game.
But one thing we were sick of was the roguelike genre. Every next fest, new card roguelike deckbuilders flooded the market, leaving not much room for innovation and keeping things interesting, we wanted to flip this upside down, and create a full fledged RPG with card mechanics, and so we created. Toll Eternal!
Yes, that was the first name we came up with. Some of our team members argue that it's simple and catches the tongue and still wish that it was still the running name, but I respectfully disagree. What do you think?
At the early stages of development we were very excited about the concept of permadeath, our heroes were supposed to be entirely replaceable and only a means for us - the player, to control and lead towards a better future by engaging on expeditions and bringing back resources to our main hub. Sounds familiar? The big difference between our game and the game we very clearly referenced, was that our heroes' strengths were entirely decided by the equipment they wore and some random base stats.
This was ultimately scrapped because we decided that having memorable characters with personal stories, internal drama and conflicts of interests, makes for a better RPG, which was also our goal from the start. We didn't want to create another roguelike. Nuh uh.
With the basic concept out of the way, it was time for our artists to cook up some concept art. This allowed us to better understand what we’re building and to gather our initial thoughts about what the finished product would look like.
We then decided to go ahead and create some fake screenshots to help initially advertise our game, and pass internal reviews. This was a long and complicated process, we experimented with various styles inspired by the artworks of Gustav Klimt, Jean Giraud, Alphonse Mucha and H.R. Giger. Every artstyle we analysed had their own charm but all of them felt too stylised and specific, they closed the visuals in a certain vibe and didn't leave much room for cool stuff and variation. We ended up deciding to keep it simple and not going for any specific stylized art style.
We were more or less happy with these screenshots so we moved on and polished them even further. Adding detail, and fiddling around with animations, attacks, particles and such.
As you can see, we really experimented with colour at this stage, we explored the idea of strong colors like bright pink and neon green, but we ultimately decided that these colors were way too overused in the genre lately, and decided to go with a more tame, grounded palette we have today.
At this point the screenshots are starting to look more like the game we have today. This was also around the time we finally decided on naming our game Shards of Order, and started creating a story around our game.
Screenshots and concepts were nice and all, but it was about time to build a playable prototype, and so we created the first version of Toll Eternal. Here it is, in all of its magnificence.
With the first version of the prototype it became awfully clear that the stamina mechanics was nothing worth exploring. It wasn't as original as we thought, it added a lot of complexity, didn't provide much fun, and so to the bin it goes. Shortly after, our designers brainstormed for a bit and ended up settling for the cooldown mechanics we all love so much. It was simple, elegant and gave us the ability to stand out from the crowd.
Another thing was the original permadeath mechanics, this was when we decided that we’d rather have cool impressionable characters than soulless minions with nothing interesting about them, other than their stats. That's when our quest to create cool character designs began, and a quest it was. We shuffled through a dozen different designs for each of our characters. Here’s how warriors look evolved over time:
With basic mechanics down, and an art style we were happy with, we started polishing the game, and ended up creating the demo we know today.
The rest is history. Hope you enjoyed this little throwback, or maybe y'all learned something about the development process behind such games. The next time we see each other will be during a new year, so don't go too crazy with the partying and we’ll see you next year!
Stay safe! Fardust team
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December is coming in hot (literally - im driving to work with a bike and a rain coat), and we wanted to wish you all merry christmas. Take this opportunity to rest, meet up with your friends and family if you can, but most importantly, enjoy yourselves. To hopefully make this time a little more jolly, we prepared a little gift for you in the form of…
The Reaver is an arrogant prince of a fallen empire, with a tricky moveset that forces the player to take full advantage of the game's movement system. He weaves between different attack modes by utilizing his weapons switch mechanics. Behold!
TRAILER
He rocks an insane switching scythe which he uses to thrust, cut and confuse his enemies. To adjust to the different modes his scythe provides, the reaver adapts by switching his stance to one of the following:
Note: The names of the stances will probably change, we’re still figuring out the lore around the character so we’ll see what fits. For now the running idea is snake stance for the offense and lion stance for the defense (but feel free to share ideas if you have any).
Each found weapon compatible with the Reaver class will react differently to certain stances, for example his starting weapon gives 4 shields when entering short stance and applies 4 strength when entering long stance.
There are a few ways for the Reaver to manipulate his stance but the main ones are swapping positions with a different hero:
And using cards with special effects:
By utilizing the switching mechanics, and the passive effects of his weapons we get a really satisfying and unique way of playing. Movement used to be a way to simply negate damage when it was necessary, but with the reaver in the equation, players have to adapt and to use the system to engage with his combos.
Other than that, he has the ability to taunt his enemies by laughing, and making fun of them in many different languages. This causes all attacks, even the ones targeting multiple heroes, to be directed solely on the Reaver.
If you have an idea for a line in your local language we should give him, share it in the comments!
Hope you enjoyed this little treat, we’re certainly happy with how the new class looks and feels when playing. I especially like the snappy sound his scythe makes when switching modes, that being said, we have one more playable character planned for the final version, so stay tuned for that. Once again, we wish you wonderful holidays, tasty snacks, amazing gifts, but most importantly…
Stay safe! Fardust team
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Good evening, as you may remember, last week we posted our little character redesign update, that was a little bit of a hit & miss. We still think that the characters need some cool features, but we’ve decided to give you the final say when it comes to some of the details, in the form of a survey. There’s not many of us here, so your vote carries real weight that can shape how the game looks.
This post will be more scholar focused. He specifically was the most controversial change that a lot of you seemed to dislike, so we’d like your detailed opinions on this. We’ve prepared 4 versions of him that we think are suitable for the final product, they may not yet final, but they will help guide us to a better final design.
The survey has some additional fields if you want to share your thoughts on the designs of the other characters as well.
Share your opinion here:
https://forms.gle/EDbwNr6VQPLQsXip7
Another thing we’re working on to further improve the look of the game is a new VFX system.The visual effects it creates will be used to decorate the arenas, maps, certain attacks as well as enemies. Lemme tell you. It looks insane.
One of the first things we’ve upgraded with it is the warriors' new redesigned arm. It gets more intense the more rage he has. We’re really happy with how this turned out, you can really feel the rage building up in the arm, and makes the warrior feel more badass than ever. Take a look:
We’ve also used the system to bring atmosphere into one of our arenas by adding a really cool looking fog:
Here's how it helped us bring out the ominous aura around Morgain's giant sword:
We’re really excited about the possibilities the new VFX system provides for us, it has the potential to make it a whole lot better of a game than it was in the demo. Stay tuned for more updates on that matter, and make sure to tell us what you think!
Thank you to everybody who participated in our little survey, as well as the criticism that led to its creation. We hope to hear more of your feedback as we move forward, your opinions matter to us, and we’re closely listening. Have a great rest of the week and as always…
Stay safe! Fardust team
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We hope November treated you well, and so will December with all the Decemberish activities, but we’ve come with more things to show off and talk about. This week also won't have much gameplay to show off, but we’re gonna have a lot of that to showcase soon. Lets get into some of last weeks changes and shenanigans. Starting with the main topic:
As we released more and more freaky beasts and horrors beyond our imagination we’ve realized that the most important characters (our squad), are looking extremely basic in comparison to the rest of the world, like they got dropped from their 9-5 straight into the world of Shards of Order. No more of that, we’ve added characteristic features that connect to their lore and the world around them, now they start to feel like they belong. And here's the result of that ◝(ᵔᗜᵔ)◜
As some of you have already realized in the previous week, the Warriors hand has become more ethereal, ghostly or maybe otherworldly. This makes sense for the story we created for him, it's constantly in our face and makes us wonder, what the hell happened to him? That's for you to find out in the full version.
The scholar was probably the most boring character we’ve had in our demo. No characteristic features, no interesting background, out the window with you. The scholar is now slowly mutating and losing his mind. He’s becoming the Lost. Is this process reversible? Can we save him? Who knows… (we do).
The scholar in particular was a journey to get right, we had to iterate his design quite a few times before we settled on his current look. Any of the previous ones catch your eye?
My personal favourite is the exile, she now apparently shoots magic arrows that float around her, the amount that's floating will reflect the current status of her quiver, which should add some extra juice to her model. What about the halo you probably think, well all i can say is that it's not only a visual, but again, connects to her story.
Tell us what you think about the new looks.
The next feature we’re working on, but it's kinda too early in the development to showcase is the crafting and trading systems. It lets us combine or trade certain items in exchange for others, to be used in quests, upgrading our equipment, or creating little trinkets that help us with our battles.
We’re hoping that these features will add more… familiarity? That it will ground the story down a little? Making what use we can of whatever we can get our hands on in a world that's literally breaking down. This feature can potentially change the entire feel of the game, we’re really hoping that it's gonna change for the better. It's kind of a big change to the economy and balance, so we’re just gonna have to see if it's even possible to implement with the budget we were given.
This is big. We got our hands on some crazy footage that was shielded by a 200 word password, it came straight out of our head artist's secure folder. Don’t ask me how I got this. Rejoice:
Jokes aside this is an enemy for the new area we’re working on, can you guess its theme based on this footage alone?
We’re almost done creating all the mechanics and enemies for the next area and we’re gonna show them off very soon. Things are going well. I’d say so far we’re on track to finish the main story questline by the end of Q1 like we anticipated, but things happen, and if they indeed do, we’ll let you know.
Stay safe! Fardust team
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Hope yall had a great week and are ready for an even greater weekend. Things are definitely energetic on our end. We’ve been polishing our UI non-stop since the demo ended and we’re finally ready to show you some of the results. Besides that we’ve been doing some marketing work behind the scenes by applying for and appearing at conventions.
Our first convention that we appeared on was WePlay in Shanghai on November 22 to 23, where people had a chance to play our demo. We also featured some of the other games our company made, those being Bermuda Survivor and Tainted Grail : The Fall Of Avalon. Both of those games are fully out on steam, and are hella cool so go check them out if you like what we do! Supporting them supports us as well 🙇♂️
It was super nice to see people come up, play our game and be excited. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!
There are also other events that we’ve got a big chance to be featured in, but nothing's certain yet so we won't provide much detail for now.
We’ve also been tinkering with the UI and how everything fits together, more changes are coming, but we’d like to share our work so far anyways. The new equipment panel is my favourite part. In the demo, the UI here was very cluttered and hard to navigate, we could see players clicking stuff back and forth, cycling through the menus and feeling lost. The changes are meant to limit the amount of buttons on the screen to bare minimum, so that we can enjoy the wonderful art and not stare at them damned rectangles all the time.
The new map is also coming along quite well, it is already implemented and very close to its final version. We’re aiming for similar results here, limiting the amount of UI on screen at any time, and the amount of clicks that the player has to do in order to move around.
The new skill trees were already teased in one of our previous posts, but here they are! Fully functional, animated and looking sexy. And with it, you can see what we’ve thought of, in terms of increasing the base stats of our heroes.
It is insanely satisfying to navigate, and with all the SFX, it is finger licking good. We’re really proud of how it turned out.
We knew it was coming, but it's happening sooner than we expected. Our game is gonna be fully playable on controllers, and steamdeck. It's entirely possible that our upcoming playtests are gonna have the controller support already implemented and functional.
I know… we didn't showcase much gameplay this time around, but we're very close to finishing a playable version of the first chapter and we’re starting to cook up the second one. This will come with a new plethora of enemies and mechanics, but we’re not quite ready to showcase them yet. Anyways, we’ll see yall next week.
Stay safe! Fardust team
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Sorry for the delay on this post, we’ve had some internal talks and we determined to post after the talks are over. We’re here to shed some new light on the state of the game, release date, and all the other stuff that comes with it. After all the boring talk, we’ve also got some new things to show you.
So, without further ado, what is it? Well we’ve learnt how the entire production will work and we’re in high spirits, we’ve been given a fair amount of time to make this game as good as it can possibly be, and we’re planning to do just that. We’re gonna push to complete the main story of the game by the end of Q1, and from there we’ll determine how much time we need to polish the game and add some side stuff. With that said it is entirely logical to assume that the game will release somewhere in 2026, we just don't yet know the precise date. There will be no early access, we’ll try to make the game come with around ~10h of playtime in a single playthrough. We think this should be enough when you consider that the idea behind the game is creating a story that reacts to your choices, giving it a lot of width.
We are also planning to organize occasional playtests, so if you’re interested in having an even stronger impact in shaping our game, then we strongly encourage you to join our discord server and look out for new posts. The spots will probably be limited though.
With that out of the way ♪ “Let’s get down to business”♪.
As our battle system expanded so has our base of new freaky beasts, and eldritch horrors, we’ve decided to showcase some of them in this post, cuz they’re WAY too cool. Some of them you’ve already in the background of some other things we’ve showcased, but here's a dedicated post.
There’s also quite a bit of lore building around them, you’ve already met the blackwing legion, they’re an ambitious and crafty bunch. They realized that they can use the lack of the law of death for their own benefit, by making others lose their minds they can create an immortal army that's easy to control. Those that succumbed to their wicked ways, turned into beings known as …
Mindless, relentless with no sense of self. They roam the land unable to either end their suffering or take control of their own minds.
They’re weak individually but their numbers are a source of both their power, and major satisfaction when wiping the floor with multiple enemies each turn. They utilise the new wave mechanics really well, truly feels like we’re fighting against an immortal army.
Those that out of fear or cunning somehow avoided being turned into the lost, had no choice but to assist the legion in order to avoid being turned themselves. Some of them are known simply as the villagers.
They offer more of a challenge than the lost, since they’ve retained their logical thinking, they can be quite deadly if you don't manage your time well enough.
As a treat we’ll also show you one of the elite enemies, the fire priest, and its… prey. This creature is a member of the legion as well. This fight is connected to an important point in the plot, and it can really test your understanding of the game if you want to achieve the optimal result.
The fire priest also has a second version that we scrapped, we will probably still reuse it as a kind of mage buff type for the villagers, because he is already fully rigged.
Look at the way the blacksmith dangles after getting hit. Isn't he the cutest?
(you notice anything suspicious in this gif?)That about wraps up today's post, we’re gonna continue as usual, with a new update post coming out every week. Although over the previous weeks we’ve realized that planning for an exact date is kinda hard to do, especially in the holiday season. Therefore this time, I’ll just say… See you next week! :D
Stay safe! Fardust team
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This week has been pretty hectic with all the holidays and stuff, but we’ve still got a lot to show you. Right now we’re focusing on making systems that support our games RPG elements, with significant changes to the battles and map. Take a look!
We’re currently working on a way to make the battles more varied, so it isn't always about murdering everything on the screen. Some of the battles will now require you to survive a certain amount of time, others will require you to protect an NPC or kill a certain enemy before it runs away.
More will be added as time goes on but, we’re planning for these objectives to have impact on the actual RPG elements, with real consequence on the map. This should further bridge the gap between combat and the map, increasing the immersion of the game.
As an addition to the objectives, the battles will now feature a wave system. This means that as time progresses, more and more enemies can keep appearing. This allows our designers to create some really interesting battle scenarios.
Here's an example (the animations are a bit janky for now, but ay… they work):
Don’t mind the dangling… cloth on some of the enemies, actually do mind it because we’re keeping it in. Don't make too much fun of it though, we don't want to make the artist sad.
We’ve also been tinkering around with the core design of the map, we’ve come to a couple of conclusions, partially following your feedback. We need easier backtracking, moving around bigger dungeons takes too much time, the same popups kept showing up each time you visited a node. As we expand our RPG-ness these travel times would only begin to grow and grow, leading to frustration. The answer was clear: we need more than a single interaction type with map areas. For example each NPC or point of interest on a certain map node should have their own interaction icon, these will be able to move around the map, changing the shape and the story of the map in real time.
Here’s how it’s looking so far:
We’re still experimenting with the visuals and overall presentation, so the looks might change in the future. We want the map to be as immersive as possible without sacrificing readability, and causing frustration.
This is just a quick sneak peak to leave you guessing and on your toes, the class's look and design is basically determined but we’re still experimenting so we’re gonna create a whole dedicated post to showcase its abilities when we’re 100% happy with it. And so here it is!
Tell us your best guesses as to what this class does and its theme under this post or on our discord -> here, and sorry for keeping you on edge like that :P
We've received a couple of questions from yall, so I'll try my best to answer them right now.
Q: “I really enjoyed the soundtrack in your game! May I ask if you’re planning to release the tracks on Spotify or other music platforms once the game is fully released? Thank you in advance for your time and for creating such wonderful music and such an amazing game!”. Thank YOU for the amazing compliments, our music is sourced from different artists, and believe us or not, some of the music that we’re most happy with has been out on youtube for almost a decade. They’re made by an artist called Dzivia, and the tracks featured in our game are:
Postaci (Shadows)
IMPERIVM
Vataha (The Pack)
As for the remaining tracks. We will consider it :D.
Q: “This game looks to be shaping up really well. I must ask you, please think about regional pricing with care. My country (Brazil) , like many others, has very weak local currencies now. If the pricing feels wrong (like, say, Monster Train 2 here) and the full game is packed with the same quality the Demo has, it's a day 1 purchase to me.”.
We will try to push this as much as possible, our country (Poland) is notorious for having some of the highest game prices in the world when adjusted for local currency, so it's something that we take personally. But in the end this decision is not ours to make.
Sorry for the 1 day delay, but the dumbass that writes these posts forgot about the national holiday, and I can say that because he's me. Anyways… we’ll see you next monday.
Stay safe! Fardust team
Q&A form:
https://forms.gle/RjVhs3oSfyjRQtrH9
Catch us on our socials:
Hello everyone (❁´◡`❁)
New week, new updates. Demo is now a thing of the past, code is nice and cleaned up, and now, we’re back in business putting out features like there’s no tomorrow. This week we’ve got some actual content to talk about. Starting with:
Le~ crit
So, we decided that we wanna give the players some occasional and sudden surges of dopamine, as well as add a chance to get out of some tough situations, you should’ve never gotten yourself into with pure luck. Therefore we decided that the best way to do that will be adding critical strikes. Some pieces of equipment will have a base crit chance, that will be upgradable via character skill nodes, and special cards. This will exist not only as an additional thing you can do, but also a way you can build your entire deck around. This should give some of you gambling enjoyers a chance (pun intended) to find their playstyle.
We’re looking for ways to make the crit look extra JUICY by implementing various things, like custom animations, exclusive vfx, time stop and different damage number. Here’s an example result of how that's going: No Crit: Crit:
We’re really looking forward to what builds we’ll be able to cook up with this feature, share your thoughts with us!
Burning Cards
Some of the enemies in the new dungeon will be able to set our characters ablaze, this will cause the characters actions to cost them health. This also causes the cards to appear “on fire” while on players hand, here’s how that looks:
Its straight fire🔥🔥🔥, The vfx under the character is subject to change, but we’re very happy with how the effect looks on the cards.
This and other mechanics should add a breath of fresh air to the overall experience of the new dungeon.
New analytics
So, after our last analytics post, we went and analysed some more data from our demo playtest (some of the people on our team are real data freaks). Here’s the things they compiled for us to enjoy. The First Shrike Fight The first Shrike battle was attempted 3771 times, and 3153 of those attempts were successful, the rest of them either lost (232) or rage quit the game (386). This is kinda surprising to us, we’re gonna have to make the objective of the battle more clear to try to make sure that no player misses our intention with it. Legionnaire Fight
538 of all players decided to take on the Legionnaire with only soldier in their team, only 1 person managed to win the fight, though we have no idea how he did it. What an absolute madlad.
The Final Shrike Fight Out of 1902 people that ran the Shrike fight, 271 of them lost, causing them to start over, 31 of them ragequit, and never finished the fight :(.
Most popular character upgrades
Here’s who upgrades most people chose on each of the characters while leveling up:
Soldier:
Judge Card
Executioner Upgrade
Shielder
Impact
Overhead Slam
Seems that people liked to play the Soldier a bit more defensively, a fair choice, BUT RAGE, WE NEED MORE ANGER!
Scholar:
WoundCurse Upgrade
Drawer
Fireball
Heal
Weakening
Fireball wasn't very popular, but it was the strongest card in the game, it could deal some massive, massive damage. Playing the mage as a support and deck manager is also a really good way to play.
Exile:
Barrage Upgrade
Expose
Healing Rain
Load Upgrade
Sharpened Arrows
We like to see that, people choosing to upgrade barrage means they understood the value in reloading and topping up your quiver.
New skill tree visuals
We thought that the skill tree UI looked a little outdated so we gave it some attention and refreshed it:
The Black Wing Legion We’ve also decided to give you a sneak peak into the visuals of a new enemy faction, The black wing legion:
Wrap up Another challenging week of work ahead of us, await new updates, follow us on our socials and stay safe. Until then, we’ll see you next week.
Cheers, Fardust team PS.: The next update will be posted on Tuesday (11.11.2025), due to holidays 🙇♂️
Q&A form:
https://forms.gle/RjVhs3oSfyjRQtrH9
Catch us on our socials:
TikTok (yes we have a TikTok now)
Hello everyone (●'◡'●)
Hope you had a great weekend, but it's time to get back on the grind. This week, we’ve compiled some data from our analytics and the feedback that y'all so kindly shared with us. We've even included some of your personalised replies because they are too funny not to share with the world.
Overall statistics The most impressive statistic is that 2700 people played our demo, and a whopping 45.7%! finished it. This is a really good sign that the game draws the players in and keeps them engaged. It was so shocking to us that we had to go back and double-check the analytics code to see if it was working as intended.
Out of the 2700 people, 115 of you filled out our feedback survey 92.2% had positive thoughts about the demo, 7.8% had mixed feelings, and 0% thought of it negatively 💘.
Combat was the aspect of the game y’all liked the most, but the results were very close to each other, with art style and story following close behind. Cards and items were amongst the least favorite options, but again, they also got their piece of the pie and had many fans. What you didn’t like
It seems that the map needs to be worked on, it takes too much time to move around and it's boring and too linear. The map being linear was our intended choice; it kept the demo short and simple. Don't worry about it too much though, there will be some girth added to the quests and story, with sidequests, choices with real outcomes and other fun stuff. Healing was another big problem for you; it seems that the game didn’t provide enough healing options, and you tended to keep your healing bells rather than use them to avoid wasting them. This is a controversial topic, naturally all of us want to keep the health bars full at all times, have 50 stacks of shields, and avoid taking any damage whenever possible, but this leads to boring fights, which often focus on minimizing what you lose over ending the fight in a quick and flashy style. We kinda want to keep it that way, this is meant to be an unforgiving place where wounds, pain, and a constant fear of death are something you have on the back of your mind at all times. Tell us your thoughts on this, we’re really curious what you consider the correct amount of healing. Other statistics
The least understandable mechanics were the enemy cooldown, and the mage's mana.
Most people enjoyed the cooldown mechanics the most, with enjoying all of the mechanics and their synergies following closely after.
The least likable mechanic was deckbuilding
The most liked hero was the Exile, with Mage in second, and Warrior in last.
35% of you thought the game should last more than 20hrs with, 32% thinking it should last 15-20 hrs.
69% (nice) thought the game should cost between 10$ - 20$
On a scale of 1-5, only 2% thought that the game was too hard, while 7% thought it was too easy; ratings of 2-4 are pretty well balanced with slight variation towards the game being hard.
Funny replies The skelly guy from the ending doesn't have a good reputation.
Q: What made you stop playing?
A: The final boss (big uber skele dude with sword in back) killed me in one fell swoop! A: I CANNOT STOP PLAYING !!!
A: THE FUCKING LAST BOSS !
Ah yes, the warrior enjoyers are being warrior enjoyers. Q: Which aspect(s) of the game should we expand the most in the full release? A: More rage (raaaaaaaaaaargh)
Such a mystery with this one, what did they mean? Is this some kind of secret code? We shall never find out…
Q: What aspect(s) of the game did you enjoy the least?
A: enigma
Thank you Jan, you shall be remembered. Q: Any additional comments or suggestions?
A: Cheers and well done from your German neighbors, Jan
Some of you even tried to apply for an internship, a very very nice try, while we cannot accept your offers, we understand that layoffs suck. Good luck in your job hunting ventures o7.
Stuff we’re working on We’re doing a lot of things, but this post is already too long, so we’ll just show you some art we’ve cooked up. We’ll touch on this more next week.
New cool arena (The doors are animated!)
Visuals of one of our new dungeons.
Q&A Someone asked - “Does your health increase when you level up in the full game? In the demo it didn't, made me feel quite weak still honestly. In most rpgs you gain more health on level up.”
Totally! You will be able to increase your HP by allocating skill points in nodes that increase particular statistics. Additionally, you will be able to bolster your defenses with armor and defensive cards.
Wrap up Thank you, everyone, for sharing your feedback. It’s been a blast reading through your replies. Hope you have an amazing week and we’ll see you next Monday.
Cheers, Fardust team
Q&A form:
https://forms.gle/RjVhs3oSfyjRQtrH9
Catch us on our socials:
TikTok (yes we have a TikTok now)
Hello everyone ~(^w^)ノ First of all, in the name of us over at Fardust, I wanted to thank everyone who played the demo, wishlisted the game or simply enjoyed watching others play it. It really hyped us and gave us a much needed boost of energy. Seeing all the reviews and thoughtful feedback made us realize that we have something special on our hands, something that y’all clearly find valuable. And so, we’ve heard you, loud and clear, we’re gonna go do everything in our power to make this game what it deserves to be. We will probably lose a few hairs doing so, but we believe that it’s gonna be worth it in the end. Your feedback matters
We’ve got an immense amount of ideas, partially thanks to your feedback, and due to that we’ve decided to try and include you in the development process as much as possible. Every Monday, from now until the full release of the game, we’re gonna be regularly updating you on the current development process, upcoming ideas, cool art as well as listening to your thoughts on certain subjects. (And talking them over) The future The full development length and the release date for Shards of Order has not yet been determined. We’re still working out the numbers and seeing what makes sense. We’ve considered releasing the game in early access, however none of that is set in stone yet, but as soon as we know more, we’re gonna inform you via our socials.
But! Not to leave you empty-handed, please enjoy a tiny bit of sneak peeks from the upcoming content (everything is subject to change, but we believe we’re getting there!):
Blackwing Legion is gathering up the Lost and locking them up in their cells. For what purpose? You will find out in Act 1 of the full game.
Yep, the big guy will use the boat as a shield AND a weapon. You can break that boat and force him to attack with his fists. The little guy is inreasing its damage with every hit received, so make sure to save those heavy hits of a Soldier for this one.
And a bit more of what the game’s full release will bring, featuring the map of the second act, a new type of enemies, and a unique mini-boss!
If you have any more questions about the game or about the team please ask them here ->
https://forms.gle/RjVhs3oSfyjRQtrH9, we’ll try our best to answer all of them in our weekly updates. See you next week Fardust Catch us on our socials:
The Steam Next Fest has just begun, and that means the demo version of Shards of Order is now available!
But what is Shards of Order about, you ask? Watch the trailer if you want to grasp the vibe:
The game is a dark fantasy RPG that features card-based combat, utilizing a unique time counter mechanic instead of traditional turns and mana points.
Expect a dark fantasy RPG with card-based combat, set in a decaying world where reality itself is unraveling. The ancient Laws that once bound life, death, and time have been shattered, leaving behind a place where memory fades, identity fractures, and even the dead refuse to stay buried. Uncover the story of a grim, shattered world by exploring its hidden corners and shaping its fate.
Complete your team of heroes, each with unique abilities, personal arcs, and customizable equipment, combining their strengths to survive on your journey. Developing each of the characters also expands your pool of cards, granting new deckbuilding opportunities.
Battle with a dynamic time-based system where every move shifts the flow of combat, and explore decaying regions filled with secrets, deadly enemies, and epic bosses. Restore shattered Laws to reshape the world; each choice carries weight, as restoring it will impact the rules of the game.
In a land where memory fades and the dead refuse to rest, every decision leaves a mark. There is no order—only what you are strong enough to bring back.
Note that in this demo, you will only experience a small bit of content and the general scope that is planned for the full game. At the same time, the general gameplay loop and formula are similar to what will be in the final version.
And speaking of the final version, we have a lot more coming to Shards of Order! Take a look at the sneak peeks of what the game’s full release will bring, featuring the map of the second act, a new type of enemies, and a unique mini-boss!
That’s it for today! We wish you an enjoyable and successful journey through the world of Shards of Order. We’d love to hear your thoughts about the game, so we encourage you to provide feedback! Also, we encourage you to join our Discord to stay in touch and talk about the game with us & other players:
Cheers,
Awaken Realms / Fardust
About
This page aggregates Steam news feeds, patch notes, and developer announcements for Shards of Order, sourced from official Steam community posts.
Major updates, balance changes, and seasonal events often correlate with player-count spikes — cross-reference announcements here with the live charts on the main Shards of Order statistics page.
Articles link back to Steam for full changelogs. SteamScope refreshes news entries as new posts are published to the game's Steam hub.