Chapter One: Introduction
I received a free, early access copy of this game from the developer. They wrote,
We really have enjoyed your reviews. Thanks for considering our game for your channel!
Yeah, right, my “channel”. Is a Steam Curator considered a channel? Is this website considered a channel?
I can’t say I have confidence in what appears to be the studio’s parent company, Entropy Games. When I registered an account, I received an email from “entropyadultgames.com”. Entropy Digital Entertainment are behind titles such as Girlfight 2024, SexStone, and Sex Quest — not exactly a promising portfolio.
Chapter Two: Gameplay (1/5★)
Section One: Overview
You assume the role of a “powerful wizard” with a deck of spells. Every turn you spend “mana” to play cards and attack your opponent. Duels in Realms Edge are rapid games that are over in a few minutes.
Section Two: Combat
You have the option to “PLAY SOLO” against AI or try your luck online against players in “PLAY MULTI”.
Players may choose one of three “starter decks”, forest, fire, or water. It doesn’t matter if you ultimately mix and match cards, but each starter has a different playstyle. Unfortunately, when I chose my starter I took the wrong playstyle — more on that in the following section.
A deck must have at least twenty cards. No more than two cards of the same name can constitute those twenty cards. Each player has twenty life points — the game ends when a player’s life is reduced to zero. All cards consume two or more “mana” and each turn available mana to spend is increased and replenished.
There’s creatures, spells, artifacts and secrets (or “traps”). Creatures can deal damage to players, creatures and artifacts. Unlike say, Magic the Gathering, players cannot “block” creatures. Instead, facedown “traps” are used to punish attacks by damaging or removing attacking creatures. Spells offer powerful, one-off effects (such as destroying creatures) and artifacts offer constant effects.
In the following image, I play a “BURN” spell on my opponent’s creature.
Section Three: Balance
The AI in this game has no fucking chill.
When I was prompted to choose a starter deck, I had no choice but to guess. After browsing the artwork in Realms Edge, I determined the “FIRE STARTER” had the highest proportion of nude women.
I should not have picked “FIRE STARTER”.
After getting my ass handed to me on repeat by the FOREST and WATER STARTER, it’s clear balance in this game is whack. FIRE cards generate little to no card advantage. “Card advantage” describes the number of usable cards you control compared to the number of usable cards your opponents control. Generally speaking, the player with the most cards has the advantage — hence, “card advantage”.
In the following image, I debate what to do. It’s my first turn, and I’m already confronted by three enemies with a total damage output of seven. I will lose roughly half my life before I can attack.
FIRE cards are designed to destroy or be destroyed.
FOREST cards can produce additional cards upon hitting the battlefield. Not only that, they’re able to negate FIRE advantages via abilities such as TAUNT and STEALTH to completely redirect damage. WATER cards can not only produce mana, they reduce the casting cost of cards and draw cards. FIRE decks have only one card to respond to the advantages of other colors: ARMAGEDDON destroys all creatures in play.
But not artifacts or traps, rendering this card only an inconvenience for WATER decks.
In the following image, I play ARMAGEDDON as a last resort to curb the WATER cards’ insane advantage. Even in this ideal scenario where I destroy three of my opponent’s cards, between ARMAGEDDON and a single casualty I only gain a single card in advantage for this stunt.
Naturally, I sought out new cards to improve my deck. Interestingly, any card regardless of “RARITY” may be purchased. With the money players start with, up to two complete decks can be sourced.
I didn’t know this at the time, so I tried my luck with “PACKS”. PACKS allow players to randomly collect five cards for the price of one (or two and a half if you’re splurging on ELITE PACKS). I spent all of my money on PACKS to build a better deck than my shitty FIRE STARTER and what I got was a second rate WATER STARTER. In retrospect, I could have sold the contents of each PACK at an extreme profit.
In the following clip, I open an ELITE PACK.
Section Four: Controls
The game is strictly controlled via the mouse. There is no way to manipulate the game via keyboard, making this title wholly incompatible with gamepads. This title would be a poor fit for Steam Deck or laptop users.
The way the mouse works is inconsistent. For example, cards are played by drag and dropping them from your hand onto the “battlefield”. But when you’re building a deck, cards cannot be drag and dropped. Instead, they are transferred between your “collection” and decks by simply clicking on them.
Chapter Three: Sexual Content (1/5★)
Section One: Content
Of the “over 80 cards to choose from”, only ten show a naked women. Where’s the fucking creativity?
Section Two: Implementation
Every other card has a naked lady as the artwork. To garner more naked ladies, you’ll have to try your luck with purchasable “booster packs”. That or purchase the cards outright for an inflated cost.
In the following image, I show my least favorite artwork in the game.
Section Three: Interactivity
There is no interactive adult content in this game.
Section Four: Quality
Can you think of at least two words to describe a naked lady? If so, you have what it takes to feed “prompts” into an AI tool and work for the NuWave Digital team!
It’s obvious the content in this game is AI generated. From deformities, fuzzy painting to inconsistent drawing styles I doubt any humans painted anything in this game. AI generated artwork is fine and dandy as an artist’s creative tool, but it’s not ready to populate a game with useable assets on its own.
In the following image, I show a deformed pair of tiddies.
Chapter Four: Story (1/5★)
Section One: Overview
NuWave Digital writes,
In this game, players take on the role of powerful wizards, each with their own unique set of magical abilities and creatures at their disposal. Assemble your deck from a vast array of creatures, spells, and artifacts, and challenge your opponents in epic battles that will determine the fate of the realm.
So. . . like Magic the Gathering but instead of “planeswalkers” it’s “wizards” and instead of “planes” it’s “realms”? Regardless, none of this “story” can be found in-game.
There isn’t so much as flavor text to suggest any semblance of creative writing.
Section Two: Plot
There are no characters, no stakes, no story. Nada.
Section Three: Characters
There are no characters in this game. . . unless you count yourself? After all, you play as a powerful wizard in this game.
Section Three: Writing
I may not be able to complain about any dialogue or story content, but I can complain about the card names! It’s like a toddler named them. We have winners such as “ANGRY TREE”, “FISH” and “TURTLE”.
When you have to employ kids to write for your games;
Chapter Five: Sound (1/5★)
Section One: Soundtrack
I had to check my system settings when I heard nothing output from the application. Absolute silence. What, NuWave Digital couldn’t be bothered to download a selection of royalty-free fantasy music?
Section Two: Sound Effects
I don’t like how much of the user-interface is silent. But I appreciate the effort that was placed into playing cards. Every time a card has an interaction, a relevant sound bite is played.
It’s actually really annoying, but I like the effort. The developers’ hearts were in the right place.
Chapter Six: Visuals (3/5★)
Section One: Title Screen
Interestingly, Realms Edge requires players to register online and login before playing the game. I wish NuWave Digital did a better job informing players this game is online only and requires user registration, but it makes sense for a trading card game with player versus player support.
There isn’t a title-screen per se, but the “PLAY” screen closely resembles a typical “home” screen for an online trading card game. It’s not terribly exciting, but it’s visually appealing.
Shown below is the login screen — it’s not terribly exciting either.
Section Two: User Configuration
There is are no “options” or “settings” menus. Granted, there isn’t much to change in the way of controls or graphics, but the least NuWave Digital could have provided is a way to adjust audio preferences.
I had to use a Windows shortcut to fullscreen the application.
Section Two: Navigation
Though the user-interface could be refined, it is for the most part, compentent.
I like all of the ways cards in the “COLLECTION” can be sorted. Being able to sort cards by ownership and mana cost in particular are highly important in the context of a deck building game.
But the COLLECTION screen also lacks a lot of quality of life. For example, it’s not obvious how many copies of each card are in use. You’d think the quantity would decrement as cards are added to a deck. . . but they don’t.
Another issue I had with deck building is lack of clarification for “tokens”. Some cards produce additional cards called “tokens” — but there is no way to preview what those tokens do. On that topic, there’s no clarification on what anything does. I can take an educated guess on what “Spell Immunity” or “Death Touch” means. But I had no choice but to learn what “Stealth” or “Frenzy” mean by losing.
In the following image, I add high powered “Mythic” rarity cards to my deck.
Section Two: Graphics
Realms Edge has a distinctly amateur look and feel. The overall generic user-interface and AI-generated artwork are far removed from any high-end experience.
Consider the following image; the text looks stock, the cards look stock, the user-interface is comprised of flat borders and shitty gradients, and playing field has nothing to do with card games or “the fate of the realm.”
Chapter Seven: Verdict (1.5/5★)
I was so excited to download this game, but NuWave Digital let me down. To be fair, they claim Realms Edge is in “early access”, implying this game not yet complete.
NuWave Digital intends to “balance and improve gameplay between decks as well as add more cards and new decks throughout development of the game based on our players feedback.”
NuWave Digital needs to dramatically overhaul the gameplay balance by redesigning pre-existing cards and “SOLO PLAY”. The AI forces players to assume highly optimized decks and strategies. Even I could find a real player in MULTI PLAY, the match likely wouldn’t differ from an AI opponent. But even if the gameplay was reworked into something tolerable, the uninspired artwork won’t be attracting any new blood.
Performance
Eating up roughly 80% of my GPU, Realms Edge asks for more processing power than I’d expect out of a minimalistic card game, but the game is considerably less resource intensive than most Unity-based titles I play.
System Specifications
I installed this software on a Windows 10 machine with an Intel Core i7-8750H CPU, and an RTX 2060 GPU and sixteen gigabytes of RAM. The software was installed onto a preinstalled HDD (manufacturer unknown).
