Photos courtesy of Cygames

The digital collectible card game Shadowverse, while not a huge franchise in the West, has gained a steady following in the East due to several factors: its anime art style, the story-based visual-novel-like campaign in a PVP environment, and of course, its own recognizable characters.

For the unintiated, let’s go through a quick rundown of Shadowverse.

The Cygames IP

Shadowverse was created by Cygames, the same company behind Rage of Bahamut, Granblue Fantasy, Uma Musume Pretty Derby, Princess Connect! Re: Dive, The Idolmaster Cinderella Girls, and the well-loved, but now defunct games World Flipper, and Dragalia Lost (in collaboration with Nintendo).

Uma Umusume, a horse racing gacha game, is a consistent top earner in mobile game revenue worldwide, despite only having a Japanese server. Meanwhile, Granblue Fantasy remains as one of the longest-running gacha games, with several collaborations, and spinoff games such as Granblue Fantasy: Relink, peaking at 114,000 concurrent players on Steam not long after its release.

At its core, the Cygames ecosystem relies a lot on its recognizable characters being mainstays in their various games. For instance, Vania or Vampy, a beloved character both in Granblue Fantasy and Shadowverse, has even launched herself to meme status.

Other characters also often show up between all the games in collaborations to bring new players in. Personally, I was initially a Granblue Fantasy player who later on branched on to Shadowverse due to all the familiar characters showing up in the card game. This may be a similar story to most individuals on how they got introduced to the entire Cygames ecosystem.

What is Shadowverse?

At first glance, Shadowverse looks like an anime Hearthstone knock-off. But that’s to be expected; contextually, Shadowverse was released in 2016, just two years after the Blizzard title revolutionized digital collectible card games.

As such, much of the game mechanics remain the same: players gain one mana point every turn, units have an attack and defense value, other card types are either single-use, or stay on the board for consistent effects. However, the game then splinters in direction with the other mechanics: players start at 20 life, and the Evolution mechanic is a central part of the game.

In Shadowverse, units can evolve, which usually gives them a stat boost of +2/+2, plus triggers additional on-evolve effects. For players starting first, they have two evolution points, while players going second have three points and are able to evolve first.

Cards are divided into various factions, each with their own specialties. Forestcraft harnesses the power of the forest for some direct damage and lots of combo potential, while Swordcraft is a unit-based faction which relies on strength in numbers. Runecraft is the magician’s pick — lots and lots of uninteractable spells, while Dragoncraft is a Timmy’s dream — mana acceleration coupled with huge finishers.

Abysscraft is a mixture of Shadowcraft and Bloodcraft. The former utilizes their own units as a resource, often sacrificing them for additional effects, while the latter relies on self-damage to play powerful cards.

Havencraft leans on summoning units to defend while artifacts with the Countdown mechanic tick down, often for a huge effect, such as board wipes. Finally, Portalcraft was a class introduced late to the game and uses deck or Puppet manipulation to achieve victory.

Decks may only use one faction combined with neutral cards; no cards can be splashed across classes.

Shadowverse: Evolve — The Physical TCG

In 2022, Cygames and Bushiroad released Shadowverse: Evolve, a physical version of the game. The rules are fairly similar, though there are some specific differences due to the physical nature of the card game. For Shadowverse fans, the transition will be easy, though!

Price-wise, optimized decklists usually run for around 75$ to 150$, though some factions such as Swordcraft and Forestcraft have some budget decklists that can hold their own.

Shadowverse: Worlds Beyond — The Shadowverse Sequel

This June, Cygames will release Shadowverse: Worlds Beyond, previously known as Shadowverse 2, the much-awaited sequel of Shadowverse. The game will be available on Steam, the Epic Games Store, and on Android and iOS.

The game promises to have revamped mechanics and is set to introduce the Super-Evolve mechanic: a limited choice to buff a certain card, giving it more stats, indestructibility, and the ability to deal more damage if said card destroys other opposing enemy units.

The game will feature Shadowverse Park. Previously, the park promised to include activities such as fishing, mahjong, and other minigames. However, the developers retracted the statement, instead focusing on the main gameplay instead.

In Shadowverse: Worlds Beyond, a free card pack may be opened once a day. However, cards now cannot be liquefied (aka dusted), unless they’re beyond the third copy. “In Shadowverse, players typically liquefied cards they didn’t need for vials to make a specific kind of deck. However, this resulted in many players only having cards from one class, causing them to struggle when they wanted to experiment with other classes because they wouldn’t have the cards to build another class’s deck,” the news article reads.

This was particularly true in Shadowverse, where players would usually only focus on one to three classes, and liquefying the rest of the cards.

In turn, the devs have stated they plan to increase card acquisition through additional systems and features. Looking at the beginner decks, these already have six legendary cards, which should hopefully be the trend for all the preconstructed offers in the shop going forward.

The game currently has 300,000 pre-registrants, roughly one month before its release date.

Are you looking forward to Shadowverse: Worlds Beyond? What class will you be maining? And which characters would you like to see added in the game?

Battle Suit Aces, an anime-styled deckbuilder, has released a demo on Steam. Read our first impressions here. Another anime-looking deckbuilder, StarVaders, has recently released, where we pilot a mech! Read our review here. Shadowverse: Champion’s Battle, a spinoff for the Nintendo Switch, also made our list on the 10 best deckbuilders on the platform.