Shiba Eternity Review: Does Shiba Inu’s Card Game Live Up to the Hype?

Shiba Eternity lets gamers construct customized decks from over 500 distinctive playing cards and acquire 10,000 completely different Shiboshi heroes. 

What Is Shiba Eternity?

Shiba Eternity is a brand new Shiba Inu-themed collectible card recreation from Playside Studios. The sport units gamers in opposition to one another in a basic one-vs.-one card recreation duel, with the primary to scale back their opponent’s life factors to zero declared the winner. Gamers use considered one of 10,000 Shiboshi heroes to name the pictures, and use spells, objects, and varied fighters to battle on their behalf. 

The sport was first introduced on the top of Shiba Inu mania in November 2021, because the SHIB cryptocurrency soared in worth and reached an all-time excessive market capitalization of over $40 billion. After virtually a 12 months of improvement, the sport’s full launch went stay on October 6. 

Shiba Eternity’s improvement is led by William Volk, a gaming business veteran with over 25 years of expertise at top-tier firms like Activision and ROKiT Video games. With such an esteemed determine placing his title behind the Shiba Inu model, expectations for the sport amongst Shiba Inu followers have been excessive. 

Crypto Briefing took Shiba Eternity for a spin to see if the sport lives as much as the hype. We’ve judged it in 5 key areas: accessibility, graphics and artwork, gameplay, story and lore, and any crypto components current. Right here’s what we thought. 

Accessibility: 4 out of 5

Shiba Eternity may be very straightforward to get began with. The sport runs on smartphones and tablets, so simply head over to the Play Store (Android) or App Store (iOS) and observe the directions to obtain it. And at 417 MB in dimension, the sport isn’t going to take up a lot house in your system, both. 

Nonetheless, as with many cellular video games, how straightforward Shiba Eternity is to play will fluctuate relying on the dimensions of your telephone display screen and fingers. The sport wants a good bit of dexterity to click on playing cards, and it could actually develop into somewhat fiddly on smaller screens. Utilizing a pill is beneficial for the most effective expertise. 

Though the sport is free, Shiba Eternity monetizes itself by in-app purchases. Gamers can earn playing cards and characters by taking part in or alternatively purchase them on the recreation’s retailer. Along with shopping for unlocks, gamers can even pay for beauty enhancements, akin to customized card backs, and expertise boosts to stage up sooner. The costs for these boons fall broadly in step with different free-to-play video games and are pointless in case you’re keen to place some effort and time into unlocking the playing cards your self. 

Graphics and Artwork: 4 out of 5

Shiba Eternity’s graphics are arguably the most effective a part of the sport. Many of the in-game belongings look polished {and professional}, and the background pictures additionally do a fantastic job of setting the scene and offering depth. The 3D renderings and customized animations for the Shiboshis heroes convey the lovable canines to life and break up the gameplay. 

Whereas the general high quality is excessive, there may be nonetheless room for enchancment. The cardboard graphics focus closely on Shiba Inu characters and develop into repetitive the extra you play. Since there may be little variation between playing cards, it could actually develop into troublesome to inform which of them you’ve on the sphere or in your hand at a look simply by trying on the artwork.  

Nonetheless, the tutorial character Ryoshi (named after the pseudonymous Shiba Inu founder), who guides new gamers by the tutorial, doesn’t give off a fantastic first impression. Regardless of sporting a refined and erudite voice worthy of any dojo grasp, the character’s sprite doesn’t match his look or the sport’s total aesthetic in any respect. 

Gameplay: 2 out of 5

Video games begin with the gamers deciding on their 4 beginning playing cards and tossing a coin to resolve who will go first. On a participant’s flip, they will summon fighter playing cards to the sphere (however should wait a flip earlier than attacking with them), play spell playing cards, connect equip playing cards to their Shiboshi, and assault their opponent. Solely weak playing cards with one or two “bark energy” will be performed at the start of the sport. Nonetheless, gamers’ bark energy will increase after each flip, letting them use extra highly effective playing cards as the sport progresses. 

Every fighter card has an assault and armor ranking. When a card assaults, its assault energy is subtracted from the defending card’s armor. If the attacking card’s assault worth exceeds the defending card’s armor, the latter is defeated and leaves the sphere. When no energetic character playing cards are on the sphere, gamers can assault their opponent’s Shiboshi immediately. Gamers win the sport in the event that they scale back the opposing Shiboshi’s well being from 30 to zero.  

For those who’ve performed collectible card video games like Hearthstone or Magic: The Gathering, you’ll doubtless acknowledge a number of gameplay mechanics that Shiba Eternity has borrowed. Nonetheless, whereas a few of these mechanics have develop into a common commonplace and make Shiba Eternity extra fast-paced and intuitive, others look lower and pasted from extra profitable video games.

As an alternative of making a novel recreation that stands out from the abundance of collectible card video games available on the market, Shiba Eternity copied a lot of what made different video games profitable and solely added a Shiba Inu-themed facade to attempt to camouflage that truth. For those who’re a hardcore gamer on the lookout for a brand new card recreation to dig your enamel into, Shiba Eternity will most likely go away you disillusioned. Nonetheless, the sport may discover a higher match with a extra informal viewers. The gameplay is fast and pretty intuitive whereas nonetheless leaving room for some strategic decision-making.

Whatever the type of gamer Shiba Eternity appeals to, there are some unfavourable facets of its gameplay that can’t be ignored. Gamers already appear uninterested in “overpowered” decks controlling the meta. Quickly after its launch, posts on the sport’s official subreddit began reporting that the Frostfire Blast deck, because it’s generally referred to, has develop into more and more well-liked amongst high-level gamers as a result of how sturdy it’s. The imbalance has elicited such a response from the Shiba Eternity participant base that the dialogue of Frostfire Blast makes up most of its subreddit’s posts. 

Elsewhere, the sport’s quest system, designed to present gamers a relentless sense of feat as they play, can also be proving detrimental to the gameplay. The hunt system assigns gamers in-game duties like utilizing an “epic” rarity card ten instances, rewarding them with expertise and the kibble tokens wanted to unlock new Shiboshis. Nonetheless, as some gamers have noted, to satisfy these necessities, there may be an incentive to carry opponents hostage in video games, leaving them on a single level of life and persevering with to play playing cards to fulfill the necessities for varied quests. This incentive construction results in a nasty gaming expertise for a lot of gamers.

Whereas builders might repair these points with time, the longer they persist, the much less doubtless it’s that gamers will stick round. Total, the Shiba Eternity gameplay leaves lots to be desired.

Story and Lore: 1 out of 5

Though the predominant theme in Shiba Eternity is martial arts, its backstory is a cataclysmic sci-fi romp coping with an array of themes from battles with alien “Greys” to Shiba Inu-inhabited planets caught in a supernova occasion. 

The essential gist is that following the 1951 UFO crash in Roswell, New Mexico, humanity found expertise from the “Shib Universe,” together with capturing a “Gray” alien who shared this data with the governments of the world. After reverse engineering the expertise, humanity “harnessed the facility of the Shibarium” and launched a spaceship known as the SS Virgil to journey to considered one of ten inhabited Shiba galaxy planets.

Upon arriving within the Shiba galaxy, conflict breaks out between the alien Greys (now known as “shadowcats” for some purpose) and the native Shiba Inu. After two wars, it’s revealed that when the SS Virgil traveled to the Shiba galaxy, it induced a dimensional tear that put two native stars on a collision course with one another. Now, the human crew of the SS Virgil, together with all Shiba-kind and a brand new character known as “Queen Andromeda” (as a result of why not), should group as much as cease this extinction-level occasion from occurring. 

It’s not precisely clear how this lore intersects with the sport. The central conceit appears to be that the Shiba Inus are sufficiently proficient in martial arts to fight the shadowcats within the conflict.

To be frank, the Shiba Eternity lore is chaotic at finest. The weblog put up outlining the story is a convoluted, poorly-written narrative that does little core worldbuilding. Whereas there may be, admittedly, a subjective factor to the story surrounding the Shiba Inu ecosystem that is likely to be misplaced on some folks (akin to myself), quite a few factors nonetheless fall flat. 

Like the cardboard recreation, the story behind it’s plagued by dog-themed puns and Shiba Inu references. Every thing essential within the lore begins with the prefix “Shiba,” making it needlessly troublesome to observe what’s occurring and revealing the author’s marked lack of creativeness. Whereas the story is actually formidable, it fails so as to add context and shade to the sport and can doubtless go away the reader extra confused than once they began. 

Crypto Factor: 1 out of 5

There’s not a lot to say in regards to the crypto factor in Shiba Eternity, because it’s non-existent within the present model of the sport. Nonetheless, in line with the sport’s builders, there are plans for a blockchain model of the Shiba Eternity that may enable gamers to make use of NFTs from the ten,000 Shiboshis assortment within the recreation to earn token rewards (It’s additionally value noting that the Shiboshis that gamers can “create” within the free model of the sport are all copies of Shiboshis from the NFT assortment). Varied weblog posts outlining the Shiba Inu ecosystem have referenced a reward token known as TREAT, which can doubtless play a task in Shiba Eternity sooner or later.

The shortage of a blockchain factor has been a disappointment for a lot of onlookers and Shiba Inu followers alike. Many had assumed that gamers would be capable of use SHIB for in-game transactions, a comparatively easy function that continues to be absent in the interim. Whereas there are hints that the long run model of the sport will assist tie collectively disparate elements of the Shiba Inu ecosystem, such because the deliberate Shibarium Layer 2 chain, Shiba Inu Metaverse venture, and Shiba Inu-backed stablecoin, there isn’t a concrete roadmap detailing if, and when this would possibly occur. 

Last Ideas

Regardless of its faults, Shiba Eternity’s launch is a landmark second for each the SHIB cryptocurrency and the broader Shiba Inu ecosystem. What began as a meme coin, launched to capitalize on the Dogecoin hype previous it, has reworked right into a fully-fledged model with the facility to draw main recreation builders. Though this primary try is missing in sure areas, the truth that it occurred in any respect ought to trigger even probably the most vocal Shiba skeptics to assume twice earlier than writing it off as a joke venture.

Nonetheless, if Shiba Eternity and the Shiba Inu model need to go additional, they need to tighten up their operations. Clear, skilled communication and model technique are a should going ahead, as is consolidating the assorted tasks created below the Shiba Inu banner. At its coronary heart, Shiba Inu is a crypto venture, and something that makes use of its mental property ought to observe this instance.

Disclosure: On the time of scripting this assessment, the writer owned ETH and several other different cryptocurrencies.