Shadowverse Showdown!

Okay, picture this: A collectible card game — except digital! And you play as one of a bunch of different classes, with cards themed to your class. You can play through a deep RPG with unique storylines for all classes, or test your deck against other players! There’s never been anything quite like Hearthstone Shadowverse!

Honestly, I didn’t even know Shadowverse was a real game. My boyfriend brought home “Shadowverse: Champion’s Battle” a couple weeks ago, and he was playing, I was struck by just how much work had gone into the fictional CCG that the high school kids in the game played with each other.

In the game, kids display the SHADOWVERSE game on their phones to each other, which links them up. They slide their phones into the wrist Shadowverse gauntlets everyone wears, then face off, Yu-Gi-Oh style, with the decks they create through the game.

It was so cool watching the kids launch Shadowverse and stand there, shouting at each other, “Now it’s time for a SHADOWVERSE SHOWDOWN (downdowndown)”, that I figured I’d see if I could find that lock screen for my own phone.

Holy crap. It’s a real game.

It might remind you A LITTLE, TINY BIT of some other game.

I’m not even going to get INTO how the game actually plays. I am just fascinated by the evolution here.

First, there’s Magic: the Gathering, which spawned approximately one million imitators, including at least four videogame implementations.

Then there’s Hearthstone, in 2014, which spawned its own imitators — including Shadowverse, in 2016. It introduced an EVOLVE mechanic to power up any card to a new form, and made the game a little less random.

Four years later, out comes the anime based on high school students playing this game. And six months after that, a games based on the anime comes out that lets you play the Shadowverse game, but in the world of the anime. It’s the same game, though.

So my boyfriend is sitting next to me, on his Switch, playing Shadowverse: Champion’s Battle, where he plays a young boy who is roaming the world looking to meet and beat gym owners with his Pokémon, I mean decks. There are Shadowverse stadiums, it is the most popular e-sport in the world of the game, etc.

I’m sitting next to him, playing the pure, undiluted game on my iPad. It’s Shadowverse-ception.

I really, really want to write a story about us playing our separate versions of Shadowverse, and then turn that into a game, which allows players to play us playing Shadowverse, or playing Shadowverse in the anime based on Shadowverse.

I mean, the game is okay. It’s kind of fun to try out the different classes and build decks. The story is pretty simple, but given there’s a story for each class, I get it. The Evolve mechanic is pretty tactical and can really turn the game around if you use it strategically. You only get to do it two or three times, depending on if you’re the first or second player.

I haven’t played an actual human, and don’t ever intend to. I don’t need the stress.