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Puzzle Strike Shadows box art
2012 Ranked #2,670

Puzzle Strike Shadows

Puzzle-battle deck-building game where players recruit characters and chips to crash gems onto opponents. New modes change targets and team play, so every acquisition must sharpen your engine before rival combinations become overwhelming.

Strategy Games Card Game Fantasy Deck, Bag, and Pool Building Variable Player Powers

Players

2-4

Play time

Not listed

Age

10+

Complexity

2.96/5

Rating

7.77

Harder to teach Highly interactive Deep strategy

Overview

At a glance

Is this game right for my group?

ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.

Teachability 2.3/5

Harder to teach

Replay value 3.9/5

High replayability

Interaction 3.7/5

Highly interactive

Player scaling 4.0/5

Scales well

Strategic depth 4.5/5

Deep strategy

See all 5 specifications

How it plays

How does it play?

Puzzle Strike Shadows is the standalone expansion to Puzzle Strike (3rd Edition). You can play it by itself or combine it with the base set.

Core mechanisms

Key systems that shape the decisions players make.

Read the full game description

Puzzle Strike Shadows is the standalone expansion to Puzzle Strike (3rd Edition). You can play it by itself or combine it with the base set. The expansion contains 10 new characters, 24 new puzzle chips, as well as: Panic Time rule to prevent games from going too long A 3-player and 4-player mode with no player elimination and that allows crashing your gems to whoever you want A 2v2 Team Battle Mode A Custom Clockwork mode to draft your own character Puzzle chips and character chips updated to ensure healthy competitive play in tournaments New components: game boards and screens Puzzle Strike is a card game played with cardboard chips instead of cards that simulates a puzzle video game such as Puzzle Fighter or Tetris. It's a deckbuilding game, which means you build your deck *as* you play the game. Every game is different because the bank starts with a different set of chips each time. Also, there are 10 characters to choose from in the base set, each with different gameplay. Between all that, there are over 411 MILLION starting conditions in a 4-player game, and even more if you include the expansion. A built-in comeback mechanic means that when you're on the edge of losing, you're also able to do even more combos than usual. You don't have to worry about shuffling cards because you just put your cardboard tokens in a bag and shake them up to shuffle! Plus, it’s pretty ballin’ to play a game with chips. Play it on your yacht, impress potential mates, etc. Though the game is fun even if you're terrible at it, it's also balanced for high level play by veteran asymmetric game balancer David Sirlin (Street Fighter HD Remix, Puzzle Fighter HD Remix, Kongai, Yomi, and Flash Duel). Integrates with: Puzzle Strike: Third Edition

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Editions

Language and publisher variants currently recorded in the catalog.

Edition Year Language Publisher / Region
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Player resources

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Game and edition data

All specifications (5)

Play and group

Players
2–4
Best with
2–4
Play time
20 min
Age
10+
Complexity
3.0/5
Credits and catalog connections

Credits

Designers

1
David Sirlin

Artists

1
Long Vo

Publishers

1
Sirlin Games

Linked items

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