Hail, Rangers!

Shardbound’s Exclusive Beta has come to a close, and we want to thank everyone who participated for sharing your time, passion, and feedback with us. An army of Rangers, from grizzled veterans to fresh-faced rookies, spent over 6000 hours crafting new decks, developing new combat strategies, and field testing those new decks and strats in battle across the isles. 

We learned a ton over the past three weeks and we’re excited to share some highlights, key takeaways, and what’s next for Shardbound!

Looking Back at the Exclusive Beta

Unveiling New Features

As a refresher to our Exclusive Beta write up, this was our biggest and longest running playtest yet, and we managed to integrate a host of new features into the build. The most important? We cut the ribbon on the Shardbound shop! For the first time ever, players could purchase new cards, commanders, starter decks, and more to really beef up their collections. All told, the community spent around 3 million Chroma!

Card upgrading came back better than ever, allowing players to fuse multiple copies of their favorite cards into bigger and badder units sporting awesome new abilities! We want players to be able to lean into the playstyle that they vibe with best, and upgrading cards to reach their full potential will unlock more epic outplay possibilities to explore and optimize. We also implemented new trackable metrics to help players better understand the power of their cards and decks.

We rolled out an all-new battle pass, where players could earn rewards for completing daily quests like winning a match or upgrading a card. Midway through, we even boosted the XP gains from quests by 10x to make sure everyone could get the most out of the battle pass during this Exclusive Beta.

Stellar Player Engagement 

You guys smashed it - 25,000+ matches played over three whirlwind weeks, totaling over 6000 hours of intense gameplay! Most of you logged in multiple times a week, dedicating at least an hour each session to craft, quest, and conquer. We also want to give a special shoutout to our most dedicated Rangers, who played over 500 matches each! We salute you!

We are both proud and humbled that so many of you made Shardbound a part of your daily lives during this Exclusive Beta. 

Stats You Never Knew You Wanted

With so much game data at our fingertips, it was pretty easy to find some fun stats to share with ya’ll! Pebble Born gang rise up!

• Popularity Contest: General Vardan, Director Petra and Sabine were the most used commanders
• Blood and Stone: General Vardan vs. Sabine was the most played matchup
• Rock Solid: Pebble Born was in more winning decks than any other unit
• Gravelanche: Pebble Born was ALSO the most summoned unit (It being 0-cost probably helped here)
• Ignite!: Kindle was king with the highest usage rate amongst spells

What We Learned

Every playtest we run is important. SUPER important. They’re more than just tests to see if the game is working as intended, they’re a chance to show you all the awesome stuff we’ve been cooking on and get your feedback! As mentioned earlier, this Exclusive Beta was our biggest and longest running playtest so far, and while we’re still working through all of your feedback, we did want to highlight some specific takeaways we’ve gleaned over the past three weeks.

First, we understand how important it is to have a variety of ways to earn content and build out your collection, and that the current reward structure doesn’t feel as good as it could. We want to add new ways for players to get more content as well as target and unlock specific content they need. 

Next, battling bots can be a fun way to experiment with new decks, but there’s just no substitute for testing your mettle against a human opponent. In future playtests, we’re looking to bring more Rangers on board, which should provide a more satisfying, and balanced, pvp experience.

We’ll also be taking a look at line of sight clarity (pun intended), making buffs, spells, and abilities synergize with more units, re-tooling/balancing relics to make them more playable and exciting to build around, and doing a balance sweep across the board as we evaluate dominant cards/mechanics and tweak as needed.

In the Exclusive Beta, players didn’t have access to a full library of cards, and with some content being slightly overtuned, matches could feel a little stale and same-y. We are hoping that opening the game up to more players, providing more ways to earn content, and adding a dash of card balance will create a healthier meta and a more interesting ecosystem for experimentation.

The Path Ahead

Now that our exclusive beta has officially ended (the game will stay on for those already in the Exclusive Beta, don’t worry), we want to open the game up to everyone! 

We hope you had as much fun as we did during the exclusive beta, and we can’t wait to dig into all of your feedback as we continue working to make Shardbound a game you’re excited to play for years to come!

Pre-register now to stay up to date on everything Shardbound, and join the chatter on X and Discord. We're building this world together, and every voice matters. Until next time, may your battles be bold and your victories brilliant!

See you on the battlefield, Rangers!