Star Realms Reviews

This is the game for you. Easy comp will forget it’s on easy and will keep getting all the good cards. Adds additional attack and buying power to get them, just a little that if you aren’t paying too close attention will miss it, and gets strings of low cost but high combo cards right in a row.
If you want a game that’s good, get ascension. A better game, the ai won’t suddenly become god, and it doesn’t appear to know exactly what’s coming in the deck (all the time anyways)
Another con of this game: it’s free to play for a time, but to get expansions (and why would you with how garbage the game is) and even to play on hard, or the full campaign, you have to buy the full game which, isn’t much, but I had a while ago done just that, and now can’t get into my account to restore it, so I can’t even buy it again to see if adding an expansion or two would make the game a bit more enjoyable.
As I stated, if you want garbage, look no further.

[update] Well the game no longer seems to have a cloud sync button (at least I can't find it), so maybe they just removed syncing altogether?? Doesn't seem like the best solution, but I guess if you can't fix it...
Other comments still stand.
Also, event cards should not disappear automatically! There's not enough time to read them, and if I look away, I'll miss them altogether.
One more thing - the card names in the game log should show the card when tapped - otherwise what's the point of showing the name? Not everyone memorizes every single card in the game 🙄.

You know, if you're going to implement a feature, do it right, not half-a$$ed. Cloud saving simply has a sync button which only seems to check the time stamp of the game progress, not the actual progress itself. So if you sync a device that's behind I progress and then sync a device that's farther ahead, too bad, you've just updated the second device to match the first rather than the other way around. There should be two buttons - upload save and download save. Or if you want to try to make it easier for the user, then check BOTH time and progress and then let the user decide in cases of conflicts.

Oh, and charging almost as much for a small expansion as for the game itself is lame.
Also, the campaign battles in the second chapter are REALLY hard. Difficulty ramps up too quickly!

Other than all these issues, the game is good and fun to play.

This game is such a fun game to play either with family or friends. I have the physical version of this game and play it with my buds at the local card shop. Just now starting to teach my son how to play.

That being said; this version of the game is horrid. About once every other game It will bug out. During the middle of my turn I will lose control of my game and the clock will run out on me. It doesn’t stop there either. After the clock running out it should by default just go to the other person and then back to me for my turn. It doesn’t though! It just plainly freezes on me preventing me from playing. The only way around is to crash StarRealms and then start it back up again. Though at that point you have most likely taken critical damage and your on track to lose.

With all that said; download StarRealms and play, it’s great. Don’t pay money on this game though. I unfortunately dropped about $30 on this game just last night when I discovered they had this game in app version. Little did I know about all the bugs.

I’m not a reviewer type of person. I don’t ever write a review cause I just don’t care. I don’t read reviews because I feel the review system only captures a small portion of the market. Usually the bad apples, or the people who go out of their way to write one. The only reason I’m writing this is because the game asked me to in the middle of my rage.

I really enjoy playing Star Realms most of the time. I pull out StarRealms and get a quick game in when I need to kill some time. Graphics are great and the game runs smoothly. However, you can definitely tell how your cards are dealt is not random. Every time you get a good base card or you get a card that allows you to start scraping your starting hand near the beginning of the game, you can guarantee that those cards will come out last. Every time. I wish they would program the AI to make better decisions instead of simply letting your better cards come out last. Also many times, near the end of the game after scraping almost all of your scouts, you need just a couple of good cards to combo, the four scouts you have left in a 20 card deck will all come out. An almost statistical impossibility. Game is good the AI just cheats and I hate a cheater.

Paper game is fun and SUPER random and often based on luck or one or two actions after a certain skill level.

This however:

1) Crashes randomly on iPad mini 1 + iOS 9.3.5. Not as bad as before so +1 star...
BUT in normal online mode, it takes approximately 30-40s to reopen game to actionable state, so I usually forfeit a turn by like a couple seconds... Arena thankfully gives longer turns!

2) AI in chapter 2 so obvious not random cards. Dumb. Is this online gambling? Stop lying to your patrons guys... Seriously... WE ARE NOT STUPID! ADMIT AI CHEATS IN STORY MODE ON THE MISSIONS YOU HAVE PROGRAMMED IT TO, LIKEWISE TRADE DECK IS MANIPULATED ON THESE SAME MISSIONS!

Make these missions harder by changing RULESET in a creative way, not just cheating and lying about it when accused by people on iTunes. Responding directly to another user's comment about this by denying it is pretty disgusting. It's not like you're a publicly traded company...

3) Bug in new arena mode: event cards played too late so I could not discard bc full hand played. It was supposed to fire but didn't, but then after I played my hand it made an overlay for me to select cards, but I couldn't select anything from my empty hand to discard... Forget how I got out of overlay... There was no "none" button ....

4) most of the expansions should be half of what they are

I own star realms, the base set. It’s truly a classic. You can fit it in your sock and spend a few hours on a Sunday drinking beer with a friend and having a good ole time.

I generally give poor marks for iOS boardgame apps because of these persistent annoyances:
1- They tend to lose dev support, becoming abandoned and useless and unplayable or—
2- They have to be redeveloped for new versions requiring users to repurchase. This is unacceptable. I’m looking at you, Ticket to Ride and others...or—
3- They rely on store purchases, like this game. These tend to add little for value. You could spend $50+ on StarRealms. Will it even be playable in two years? Your gamble.
4- and/or they port iOS games direct to PC platforms like Steam, then charge several times more as if they just made a PC game. Then they drop dev support. This is just unscrupulous and wrong. I don’t have the space to list these titles but I am pretty sure this is one.

If money is no object, buy away. The hard AI is easy, unless playing campaigns, where they start with extra cards in play. It does teach you the value of ships and will improve your irl skillz. Buy the two big expansions if you need more ship candy, but not that mind blowing of a change.

I've been playing for over a year now and I have serious questions about the RND function when shuffling discards. For a bit of background on me, I have a degree in statistics. When I first started playing, it seemed to that whenever I got one of the 7 or 8 cost cards, if they went to the discard pile first, were almost always one of the last two cards to appear after the pile was shuffled. I started tracking the data to see if I was remembering bad case scenarios, but after a couple hundred games, this was happening, and happening at rate nearing 2 standard deviations. For those that don't know, standard deviation is a measure of how close to the norm something is. Anything past 2 is a big problem. I played a game today where I had 5 base cards and 10 cards from the trade row. On the reshuffle, I got all 5 base card on the initial draw. That's about 400,000:1 odds. And yes, I understand computer RND isn't truly random, but it's also not this bad.

Other than that, it's a good game.

I enjoy playing Star Realms, but after all of these years StarRealms still remains a mediocre port of a desktop application. Why are we tapping on arrows to scroll through cards on a touch screen device? This makes no sense and is extremely counterintuitive and cumbersome.

This latest updates makes the stealth needle morph into the card you clone. This is fine unless you want scrap the card you copied; you have to be careful to scrap the original and not the copy with no visual clues, just logically remembering that the original came first.

The AI is infuriating at the end of games. It will play out complete turns even when it can already end the game. Real fun when it has two battle screechers and you get to watch the painfully slow animation of shredding the whole tableau of cards twice (I have NEVER seen it scrap less than all of them) while you’re sitting there with 5 health and the computer already has 38 attack.

I have a notification badge on my iPad icon even though I have no active games. My friend does, too, so it’s not just me. So irritating. I’ve tried everything I can to delete it, but even removing StarRealms and reinstalling only works until the next time I play online and then the notification is back.

I appreciate that one price unlocks tablet, phone, and desktop apps but I really wish they would put more effort into the iOS app.

This game was great until the last few updates. In the last few weeks the developer has decided to make small changes to gameplay and UI that have made the game annoying to play. Since these updates, the game has been less responsive and a little more annoying to play. Specifically, I’m referring to how close some of the buttons have been moved together, allowing for errors during game play. However, the worst thing that has been done is now players can concede mid turn and it stops the game immediately. This is incredibly annoying as many players use this when they know they’re going to be defeated midway through another players turn in a live game. It’s one thing to concede defeat, but it’s unsportsmanlike to cut the winning player’s turn short because the losing player doesn’t want to see their loss.

I haven’t played all the modes yet, but I’ve played enough to see that it is a solid, fun deck building game. I’ve played and enjoyed Ascension before, and it seems that most polished deck builder games are fun and have a similar feel. This one is no exception. It’s the themes and flavor that set different deck builders apart. This has a starwars/startrek kind of theme with the nice addition of a campaign mode with a narrated story. Also has an online PvP mode and an in person PvP mode where you just pass your phone to your opponent. I’d definitely recommend this game to anyone who likes or is open to trying deck-building games. And keep an eye out for when Hero Realms is released on digital. That’s a similar game by the same company, but with a rpg fantasy theme rather than the starships.

I love Boardgames and card games. I especially love app versions that allow me to play my favorite games on my own, when traveling, etc. and StarRealms does a fantastic job of being the star realms deck builder to an app. The campaign was a great idea to add to StarRealms version. I have minor complaints about the game operation but that doesn’t break the game at all. My biggest issue is that unless you are manually refreshing the online multiplayer screen, by the time you actually get the notification you are in a match, you will have missed a turn or two. It’s minor because you can do the manual refresh but until I figured that out I lost several matches because I came into the game late.

Otherwise, great job developers.

A fellow board game geek introduced this game to me and it is super fun! I’m so glad there is an app for it because I’ve been practicing, learning the cards in order to get better and actually win a game or two. Now I play the campaigns and online with other players. 👍 here are my thoughts on improvements.
First, could the game makers please add a simple chat ability to the online gaming feature? It’s be nice to have a dialogue with the person you’re playing. Being able to say like ‘nice one’ or ‘good game’ would be fun.
Second, when I go into the arena most often I’m playing with cards I’ve never seen before. It really puts me at a disadvantage as far as strategy and a plan for my game play. Is there any way to be able to arena with people who have the same card pack sets as you?
Thanks again for this super fun game!

I absolutely love playing this game, and I will eventually buy the full version, the only thing I think it could learn from its other variant, called Hero Realms is the ability to undo certain actions, sometimes you will mistakenly purchase something or scrap a card you didn’t want to and there’s no way of undoing it which is frustrating because these are things you could do in person. And I’m not talking about changing your mind about purchasing something from the middle but the explorers, sometimes I’ll missing quick one, but there’s no way to go back, and now I’ve spent part of the money I was going to use to buy a bigger ship and now I can’t afford it lol it’s an easy fix the mechanics from the newer here around’s game just needs to be flipped over to Star Realms

First off, game is great. Probably one of the most successful boardgame ports I have played and I’ve played them all. Star realms is very easy to pick up and very approachable for new comers. I mainly play it online with a group of friends so I will not comment on the way the AI seems to manipulate decks.

Online async play on any platform is almost flawless. ALMOST. The reason for the title of this review and my major gripe is that the online play gives you spoilers. The list of ongoing games tells you the players Authority AFTER the upcoming turn. Meaning you will know if your opponent had an awesome turn even before you see it. That is disappointing. But what’s worse is that the game will tell you you have lost before you see the final turn. It’s way more compelling to have a little bit of authority left and draw a bunch of good cards hoping you can last one more turn and then watching your opponent draw every card in her deck and annihilate you. Instead you get an iPhone notification that you lost or the ongoing games icon changes to “YOU LOST”. Lame. Why not make all that update AFTER you watch your opponent’s turn? That is satisfying to all sides.

Anyhoo, I wish I could say that’s a minor gripe but I find it really disappointing. That said, I’ve still played dozens and dozens of Star realms and will continue to do so. Thanks.

Yes it’s cards, but it really does feel like a space fleet battle with bases and ships. Faster than a lot of deck builders, each game takes only a few minutes, but plenty of strategy and depth. The card art is great and the info on each card well presented. The gameplay is 5 stars, but the interface could learn a lot from Ascension. It’s perfectly fine, just not as polished. For example, when you zoom a card to review it, you can’t just take it or play it from there, you have to unzoom first. Ascension lets you select or play right from the zoom. You can only see 5 played cards at a time, where Ascension fills the screen width and then scrolls between them more easily. Things like that lowered my overall rating, but really they’re minor. The game is exactly what I expected from the description, so if it sounds like your kind of fun, get it! No ads, no pay to win, fair prices for the many offered expansions. This is how apps should do business and it’s a solid game to boot.

I got into this game on PC, and had to pick it up on mobile. It is 100% the game on mobile as the PC version (with some UI changes to match the format).

Works on my 6s well, and is great on a tablet. Smaller phone users with fat fingers may have minor frustrations though (but probably not anything your not used to already.

Space combat, crew combat, trading, diplomacy, Game if Thrones scheming by contacts, Solar Wars, trade disputes-its all there. Play laid back on basic, or crank the difficulty and get deeeeep into the systems. Follow the story, or don’t. Massive amount of stuff to do and ways to play.

With, as if this writing, the devs working on their 240th totally free update (no in game purchases or expansions, pay for the game once and it’s all yours) it has some of the best post release and consumer friendly support out there.

Need help with something or just want to know who the hell Shalun is? The devs and community are on Discord, Reddit and the like to help you out.

Can’t say enough good things here. The learning curve can be a bit steep when you 1st wade in, but it is well worth it!

I love Star Realms, and I have all three of the physics card decks and several other expansions. StarRealms is a fantastic implementation of the game. I played for free for a long time (since I spent so much on the cards themselves and was only really interested in playing some solo against AI on StarRealms .) Eventually I did upgrade to the paid app, but haven’t added any expansions in app yet. And while that might be fun to do so, I don’t need to. The campaign modes are especially fresh and challenging—my favorite part of StarRealms , and even just the standard AI is fun to play against. You really don’t have to spend money to enjoy StarRealms—you might choose to, but you’re never feeling forced to. Highly recommended.

I own the re-themed Hero Realms physical equivalent to Star Realms and play it a ton with my son... sadly he’s becoming a teenager and playing cards with dad is getting lower down his list of priority things to do... enter Star Realms, StarRealms . It’s great! No bin full of cards to sort, and store. The tutorial is excellent and even broken up into sections to avoid overwhelming folks. The expansion packs are in the game as extra in app purchases for a very reasonable price and best of all I can play it without my son! The easy mode is too easy but good for newbies and is the best level to learn and build skills. I haven’t tried the expansions nor the campaign mode yet but I will!!! It’s quickly become my favorite board/card game digital app. It’s a little more thinky than Onirim but that is a good thing!

I love board games and have owned more than 400. Star Realms is one of my favorites, and there’s no deck builder my family and I would rather play. It’s that good!

So what hooked me? Well for starters, I first played it here for free.

There’s so much to like about this game. I love the factions and all the different synergies. I love the bases. I love how much the designers packed into this game while keeping the mechanics super streamlined and intuitive. The iconography is easy to understand and we rarely have questions about the rules (not so with other deck builders). I love the space theme, and I REALLY appreciate the family friendly art. This is a game we can ALL enjoy.

StarRealms is great. It is intuitive and works well. Thanks for the “Pass and Play”! I’m not sure why many apps don’t have it, but we appreciate it.

Although the free version is awesome, after many plays we finally bought Colony wars. We loved that so much, I went to my local board game store and bought a physical copy of Frontiers (and the base game). Frontiers adds lots of new ways to play the game and most of them are great, but we especially love the co-op versions. My family and I mostly play competitively, but the co-ops in Frontiers are a fun twist to play sometimes.

This game is fantastic. From what I understand, it was created by one of the guys responsible for Magic: The Gathering, and it shows in the deck building and stacking of abilities. If you enjoy Magic, but don’t want to spend time on deck management or between games, check this gem out. You start with a basic deck each game and draft from a market in the center. As you learn the different factions, you learn what combinations work well together and get to a point where you can almost always find a good option in the market. I’ve only played the free version so far, and I’ve enjoyed it immensely. In fact, you can play the first campaign stage and then just play battles pretty much forever without paying anything. If you do decide to pay for content, it is reasonably priced in my opinion. A physical version of this game would cost around $20. There is a similar game called “Cthulhu Realms” if you’re into the Cthulhu mythos. My fingers are crossed for Hero Realms to come to StarRealms Store.