Awaken Realms Reviews 21

Placed a pre-order for a product roughly 3 years ago. After waiting years, I finally gave up and requested a refund, and the company refused to issue a full refund.

Company will not deliver your products or return your money. I would avoid at all costs.

Refunds will not be issued until you receive the package (which has not even been shipped yet) and until you send it back at your own expense (the money will not be returned).
You are just a wallet, once you have invested money, you are no longer interesting, for Awaken Realms you are already an empty space.

Great company, always looking to push the boat out on quality. Not always easy to deliver as too many variables, but over 5 out of 5.

Stay away from AR if you want to make business with a trustworthy company. They promise to deliver a ready to ship product (of course exclusively and you have to be fast). In the end when they cannot keep their part of the deal, they simply ghost you and don’t give fudge about what the initial contract said.

Backed Puerto Rico Special Edition for $146 in September 2024. Game was manufactured and shipped to thousands of others. Mine was never sent because their Pledge Manager closed and they refuse to work around it — even after I provided my address directly and offered to pay shipping.

Their offer: a 91% refund. They keep 9% of your money for a product they never delivered.

When I tried to escalate to Gamefound for dispute resolution (as promised in their Terms of Service), the contact form just forwarded my complaint straight to Awaken Realms. The email contact@ bounces entirely. Not surprising — both companies share the same CEO and the same address.

I'm not the only one. Search BoardGameGeek and you'll find the same story from backers of Nemesis: Retaliation, ISS Vanguard, Dawnfall, and others. Same closed Pledge Manager, same 91% refund, same refusal to ship.

Pathetic organization. Project delays can happen. But for this to drag on for over two years without any justification is unacceptable. The excuses are creative and long-winded: Corona, the Eastern European conflict, US tariffs, production in China, etc., etc. (the Illuminati are still missing...) Virtually everyone, but never Awaken Realms! But for the content to deviate from the advertised product during production, despite assurances and promises regarding design, materials, and especially quality, is not just a breach of contract—it's downright malicious intent. You don't get what was started in the funding round and ordered by the pledge manager. I call it underhanded fraud! We know what projects raise in the funding round, and that's far beyond what the final product is worth. Awaken Realms are nothing but charlatans, scammers peddling flashy 3D-printed goods. Not a single board game has managed to escape subsequent rule updates. Even here, balancing and quality control are completely ignored. I hope your fraud will end soon.

I backed a project a year ago. They only updated through website about the project, which i don't have the time to read through even if I wanted too. I expected to receive an email stating when I should enter my my address or any sort of personal reminder regarding this matter. After reading the title of an update stating that the shipping process has started I wondered if they have ever contacted me about my address. Spoiler: they did not. 'Customer' service states this is my own fault referring to their terms and conditions and since the pledge has closed they could not help me further untill it reopens or I ask for a 91% refund. I also stated I expected a project of this magnitude to at least send me a personal email warning me to update my address. Their response was that since the project is large they can't do that... . In a world of amazons and other large companies who have automated systems in place for their customers, it is quite unbelievable a legitimate company would handle their process in this way. Taking my money for over year is easy, getting something in return seems quite hard. The only companies I know with the same way of doing business are gambling websites. Unless you have time to spare to follow up the projects you backed, be careful with this website as they will put all the responsibilities with the customer.

I can confirm what the others are writing about these scammers. They take people's money and churn out AI-generated, low quality crap. It's unacceptable.

These guys are total scammers. Don't give them your hard earned money.
You've been warned.

I tried to start a crowdfunding campaign with them. I went through the whole thing, but then when I put in my banking details their financial partner (Adyen) had a problem with my information. They wouldn't tell me what the problem was, and I was essentially black listed from their platform. I tried to reach out to them to find out what the problem was and how I could fix it and they said Adyen wouldn't tell them. So I ended up going with Kickstarter (much better user interface in my opinion) without any issues, but I thought maybe I would use them as my fullfillment manager. I received a pretty blunt email telling me to bugger off, that I'm not allowed on the platform at all. I don't even know what I did wrong!

Their payment platform give me error, charged me twice. They say this is not their business and to talk with the game creator.
THEIR PAYMENT PLAFORM. Their business.

Ok c’est pas une arnaque et on reçois les jeux mais à quel prix 🙈 Le prix affiché est sans la taxe donc surprise quand on doit payer le vrai prix par la suite , les frais de ports sont exorbitants et si on demande l’annulation il y a 20% qui est gardé par gamefound ! 🙈

Gamefound is storing Credit Card information by default...

If you want to avoid this behaviour: you have to uncheck a very tiny checkbox, in pale color hidden below the payment information... easily missed especially when you deal with boardgame (that should be only fun) late in the evening.

Forcing this kind of UI interaction regarding sensitive information like a Credit Card Number is to me an offense.

The behaviour for storing such (and any if you ask me) sensitive information SHALL be exactly the contrary.
The checkbox requesting storage MUST be unchecked by default.
People who want you to store those will have to do it only once and knowing what they do.

This review is as of the 14th of September 2022.
And in my first experience with this issue back in April of the same year, someone at Gamefound even had to manually remove it, they did not even confirm the operation, this is ridiculous.

When the estimate to ship is 5-7 dollars, it's a bit ridiculous for the /actual/ shipping price to be 20 dollars for a 35 dollar game. Customer service seems non existent. When I look for the "help" or "contact us" it seems to just be for the people running campaigns, not people backing them.

Really poor Customer Services. You have more chance of getting blood from a stone than getting any information from them. Over 2 months my goods have been gathering dust in a UK warehouse. After chasing many times the only info I have extracted from them is there is a shortfall of some stock. I have been given no timescales, no apology from AR or explanation and they refuse to ship what they have (like any company with an ounce of respect for their customer would offer) and then forward the rest when they have sorted their own ship. Their products are good (speaking from past experience obviously) but their CS is woeful.

Twice I had kickstarters go awry with Gamefound. The problem was on their end, but there is no way to connect to them, they just pass you to the person who ran the kickstarter. I now will not kickstart anything that they have a hand in.

So unfortunate that games are using this site to manage pledges. Absolute worst customer service. I'd rather deal with the DMV or United Airlines than gamefound.

Truly appalling customer service. I suppose it's hard to expect much from a company whose sole purpose is to capitalize on the work of others but I was still let down. Delayed response time and lack of concern or help from customer service (when they feel like looking into an issue).

Great company that delivers inovative, unique, interesting and very high quality (both component and game play wise) board games. They are not afraid to try out new ideas and implement them successfully in their games.

Additionly, I have reached two times for the support and both times I had received a very friendly and professional treatment.

Two issues. I purchased an item from their Kickstarter campaign, but after waiting all this time, I'm being asked to pay an additional 25 euro for a game that only costs 40 euro to begin with. They could use a slow, low cost way to ship, but instead, the customers are footing the bill.

Second, despite already entering my payment information, address, and contact details into kickstarter and setting up an account there, I have to redo all of that process on their website. Not a good customer experience.