Now that we've played more Fightball, and sampled this German real-time card game, I think I can safely say that the future of realtime card games looks a lot more like regular card games than it used to. We're playing enough Fightball that we may be heading for a full review soon, so:

LiftOff has three to five planets on a front, much like BRAWL's Bases. You need to get blue resource cards onto your side of a planet, then a yellow Lift off card, then some red orders cards to actually do something with your resources (and those of the planet). So like Fightball, you have play order to keep track of. Unlike Fightball, you never play anything directly to another player's side or put any of your cards in amongst theirs. The game feels pretty isolationist because of this, but you do have to watch what your opponent does, because the two of you are both after the resources of the planet card. There's no sense throwing your Ore Collection card on a planet that's already stripmined, nor in Terraforming a planet that your opponent hasn't contributed to Terraforming as well.

I've really only played this enough to know that, like Fightball (again), it's kinda more annoying than Falling or BRAWL but definitely promising. And $13 for two full decks of color cards and a game that goes to four players is most certainly not bad.