Info about CD 2: Trap Master:

Official game description:
Ever since 2019, when I first played _Slay the Spire_, I’ve dreamt of creating my own deckbuilding game. In _Trap Master_, as a youthful ninja, you will assemble a unique deck of traps and powers, discover treasure of surprising effects, and guard a different base each time until you are ready for the unforgiving boss.  
Face off against 40+ types of enemies and defend over 100 bases. Shoot, scorch, slice. Punch, pierce, poison. Bounce monsters into water to drown them. Summon warriors to fight them. So many traps and tricks to exterminate waves of incoming enemies!  
Collect cards to craft the deck of your choice. Start from a few basic trap cards, and expand to a versatile deck that could stop a variety of enemies in different terrains. Find powerful synergies with over 100 traps and skills, and test your strategy on the field!  
Choose your path and encounter curious events that can change the course of your run. Unfold the dark secrets behind the relentless assaults, and study what it takes to become THE Trap Master.  
Features
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\- **100+ deadly traps and skills** to craft your deck  
\- Upgrades & Inscriptions to beef up your cards  
\- **Over 100 cleverly-designed bases** to defend  
\- **45 enemies** with unique abilities to challenge and destroy  
\- A treasure system to boost your power  
\- Procedural generated system for extensive replayability  
\- Events and encounters for an immersive adventure

Release date: 28 Mar, 2024

Categories: Deckbuilding, Tower Defense, Roguelike, Strategy, Procedural Generation, Single-player, Meta-Progression


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Fun, polished, and enjoyable gameplay (weight 0.61): The game is generally considered fun, enjoyable, and easy to get into, with smooth animations, good music, and polished visuals. It offers a relaxing and casual experience with a comfortable pace, and has improved since its early access phase.
- Strategic trap placement and synergies (weight 0.48): Strategic trap placement is key, with diverse and carefully crafted traps that can be moved and combined for powerful synergies. The game rewards players for creating effective trap setups and utilizing environmental interactions, leading to satisfying and visually impressive defenses.
- Random levels increase replayability (weight 0.14): Randomly generated levels with different map layouts ensure high replayability. The levels are well-designed and offer a balanced difficulty, making the game suitable for short play sessions.
- Charming and whimsical art style (weight 0.12): The game features a charming and whimsical art style with cute and colorful designs. The visuals are well-executed and suit the game's theme, although some reviewers noted that the presentation is not perfect.
- Unique and challenging boss designs (weight 0.06): The game features unique and challenging boss designs that require players to adapt their strategies and card combinations. Interesting map designs further enhance the overall gameplay experience.
- Dedicated development team (weight 0.06): The development team is dedicated and responsive to bug reports, documenting and addressing them. Many bugs have been fixed since the latest version update.
- Instant kills with water displacement (weight 0.05): Enemies in the first two chapters, including bosses, can be instantly killed by displacing them into water if they can be pushed. Catapulting creatures into the water as they approach the altar is enjoyable.
- Upgrades make the game easier (weight 0.05): Each playthrough takes about 1-2 hours, and players earn 'Demon Eyes' to purchase upgrades for subsequent runs. Upgrades acquired with 'Demon Eyes' gradually make the game easier.

Common complaints:
- Poor card balance and limited variety (weight 0.68): The game suffers from poor balance, with weak starting cards, limited card variety, and ineffective card synergies. This leads to repetitive gameplay, a heavy reliance on luck, and a lack of strategic depth, making the game feel tedious and unrewarding.
- Poor translation and confusing descriptions (weight 0.56): The game suffers from poor translation quality, with untranslated strings, confusing descriptions, and inconsistent terminology. This makes it difficult for players to understand game mechanics and follow the story, leading to a frustrating and confusing experience.
- Numerous bugs and unfair situations (weight 0.55): The game suffers from numerous bugs, glitches, and crashes, negatively impacting the gameplay experience. Some levels contain unfair or unwinnable situations due to enemy spawns and map design. These technical issues and design flaws lead to frustration and detract from the overall enjoyment of the game.
- Inconsistent and low-quality visuals (weight 0.49): The game's visuals are inconsistent and of low quality, with reused assets and a strange art style. This contributes to the impression of an unfinished or low-quality product, detracting from the overall presentation and player experience.
- Long loading times and tedious menus (weight 0.46): The game suffers from long loading times and a tedious main menu, making it frustrating to start and continue playing. These issues contribute to a negative initial impression and can discourage players from engaging with the game.
- Inconsistent and unbalanced difficulty (weight 0.43): The game's difficulty is inconsistent, with some stages being too easy and others being frustratingly difficult. The difficulty curve feels unbalanced, and the game can become tedious rather than challenging, diminishing the motivation to continue playing.
- Repetitive gameplay and limited content (weight 0.34): The game lacks variety in maps, enemies, and boss behaviors, leading to repetitive and monotonous gameplay. The limited content and lack of meaningful progression diminish the motivation to continue playing, making the game feel like a quickly made product.
- Poor treasure rewards and relic downsides (weight 0.14): Treasure rewards and relics are generally poor and don't provide meaningful upgrades, with relic downsides often being too severe. This makes many relics undesirable and reduces the incentive to explore and experiment with different builds.
- Poorly designed boss fights (weight 0.08): Boss fights are poorly designed, featuring confusing mechanics, excessive health pools, and overpowered early game builds that become ineffective later on. This leads to frustration and a lack of strategic depth in boss encounters.
- Difficult map design with multiple spawns (weight 0.08): Some maps have enemy spawns coming from multiple directions, making defense difficult due to limited means of blocking enemies. This leads to frustration and a lack of strategic depth in map design.
- Card upgrade and carry-over issues (weight 0.08): Upgrading attributes on certain cards will not be retained, and selecting certain options during initial card selection can prevent further card selection. Devil cards earned after completing the game cannot be carried over to new game progress.

Gameplay feedback:
- Tower defense deckbuilder roguelike hybrid (weight 0.95): The game uniquely blends tower defense mechanics with roguelike deckbuilding elements, drawing comparisons to 'Slay the Spire' and 'Orcs Must Die'. Players strategically place traps (represented as cards) to defend against waves of enemies on randomly generated maps, progressing through levels connected by a roguelike-style tree diagram.
- Adjustable speed, varied enemies/terrains (weight 0.16): The game includes features such as adjustable game speed, pause functionality, and diverse terrains that change even after multiple playthroughs. Battles involve regular, elite enemies, and main bosses, with bosses posing a significant challenge by attacking multiple times and leading their followers.
- Card customization, varied rewards/events (weight 0.15): Cards can be customized with affixes, but enhancements reset after each stage, encouraging strategic choices. Victories reward players with gold, new cards, and artifacts, while random text events and trading opportunities add variety to each run.
- Complex card synergies and stacking (weight 0.1): The game features complex card synergies and buff stacking mechanics, such as Rage stacks and totem combinations, that can significantly impact gameplay. Optimizing these synergies requires careful deck construction and strategic card play.
- Random maps, short playthroughs (weight 0.09): The game incorporates roguelike elements, including random map generation, which can lead to varying levels of difficulty and require adaptable strategies. A single playthrough is relatively short, lasting approximately one to two hours.
- Terrain exploitation for easy kills (weight 0.07): The game allows players to easily eliminate small monsters by pushing them into water using traps like springs or wall spikes, provided the terrain is suitable. This strategy emphasizes the importance of terrain and map awareness for efficient defense.
- Inconsistent trap variety feedback (weight 0.07): Reviews are mixed regarding trap variety; some players find the initial selection plentiful and expanding with experience, while others feel the traps lack diversity. This suggests an area where the game could benefit from further balancing or content additions.
- Energy accumulation/recovery imbalance (weight 0.06): The speed of energy accumulation is slower than the deck's rotation, making draw-type cards weak and high-cost cards ineffective. Conversely, energy recovery cards are so strong that they can easily lead to invincibility if acquired.
- Puppet unreliability, mounted enemy issues (weight 0.05): Summoning puppets have limited effectiveness, while some enemies ride creatures, potentially leading to unnoticed base intrusions. These points highlight specific gameplay nuances that can impact player strategy.
- Concise decks are generally better (weight 0.03): A concise deck is generally more effective, and card removal can be beneficial, except for specific deck archetypes like burn decks. This highlights the importance of deck optimization and strategic card selection.
- Inscriptions add gameplay variety (weight 0.03): Inscriptions provide passive abilities that can significantly alter gameplay, adding variety to each run. These extra mechanics offer opportunities for unique strategies and playstyles.
- Early items impact late game (weight 0.03): The items acquired in the first two chapters significantly impact the later game. This emphasizes the importance of early-game decisions and resource management.
- Defend blue portals (weight 0.03): The primary objective is to prevent enemies from reaching the blue portals from the red portals. This simple objective defines the core gameplay loop of defending against enemy waves.
- Manual card refresh with cooldown (weight 0.03): Players manually refresh their hand of cards by pressing R, which then triggers a cooldown before they can redraw. This mechanic adds a layer of strategy to card management and timing.
- Moving walls test placement skills (weight 0.03): Certain walls in later levels move, testing placement areas. This adds a dynamic element to level design and requires players to adapt their trap placement strategies.

Performance notes:
- Inconsistent performance reports (weight 0.07): Some players report good performance and smooth gameplay, even on lower-end hardware, while others experience lag issues. This suggests that performance may vary depending on specific hardware configurations or game settings.

Recommendations:
- Numerous issues; not recommended (weight 0.53): Many reviewers do not recommend the game due to issues such as poor level design, frustrating UI, unfair difficulty spikes, and imbalance. Some also cite misleading advertising and a lack of resemblance to previous installments. Several reviewers requested refunds or warned against purchasing, citing concerns about encouraging low-quality releases.
- Enjoyable for genre enthusiasts (weight 0.44): Some reviewers find the game enjoyable and recommend it, especially to tower defense and roguelike fans, or when purchased on sale. They highlight its unique gameplay, card system, and roguelike elements. However, some suggest that balancing and card acquisition need improvement.
- Potential for improvement exists (weight 0.44): Some reviewers found the game enjoyable despite its flaws. They hope the developers will use this as a foundation to improve, address shortcomings, change the art style, and create better works. Some suggest adding more modes in the future, such as endless or challenge modes, to increase replayability.
- Hopes for future improvements (weight 0.15): Reviewers express hope for future updates to improve the game, particularly regarding balance adjustments, map optimization, and the addition of more traps. There is a sense that the game has a solid foundation but needs further development to reach its full potential. Some also hope for improvements to the Japanese translation.
- Fun, addictive, rewarding (vague) (weight 0.07): Some reviewers found the game fun, addictive, and rewarding, citing terrain modeling, trap interactions, and variety of enemies and traps. One reviewer still found the game fun despite the lack of challenge. These points are too vague to be useful.
- Card draw randomness frustrating (weight 0.04): The game's balance needs improvement, particularly regarding card acquisition. Players express frustration with the reliance on random draws and desire a way to target specific cards for strategic play. This lack of control over card draws impacts the player's ability to develop effective strategies.
- Weak global progression system (weight 0.03): The game lacks a meaningful global progression system. Account upgrades offer little impact on the overall gameplay experience. This absence of impactful progression diminishes the sense of long-term investment and reward for players.

Other player notes:
- Varied card types enable synergies (weight 0.09): The game features a diverse card system with trap, skill, consumable, and curse cards. Players can discover treasures and enchant cards, creating opportunities for powerful synergies and unique card-drawing strategies.
- Minimal story, inconsequential choices (weight 0.08): The game's story is minimal, primarily involving conversations with a book. Dialogue choices have no impact on gameplay, as the player is always sent into battle, with winning battles earning the book's respect.
- Early access, balance issues (weight 0.05): The game is in early access, so balance issues are expected. The reviewer expresses hope for future content additions.
- Unskippable startup animation (weight 0.04): The game forces players to watch an unskippable animation on every launch. This negatively impacts user experience due to the unnecessary delay.
- Support for domestic games (weight 0.04): The reviewer expressed hope and support for more high-quality domestic games in the future. This point is a general sentiment rather than specific feedback.
- Model similar to Soul Sacrifice (weight 0.03): The model in the first book is too similar to the game Soul Sacrifice. This may indicate a lack of originality in certain design elements.

Emotions:
No emotions}