- Engaging, replayable gameplay with innovative card mechanics
- Charming art and sound design
- Deep strategic layers and satisfying combos
- Excessive reliance on luck can be frustrating
- Confusing rules and mechanics hinder accessibility
- Insufficient game content and problematic boss mechanics
Emotions
Players feel satisfied due to the game's overall fun and addictive gameplay, often highlighting its unique and innovative mechanics, strategic depth, and high replayability. The appealing art style, music, and charming thematic elements also contribute significantly to a positive experience.
Frustration stems from unclear UI and game rules, leading to difficulty understanding mechanics and card effects. Players also experience frustration due to annoying random elements, reliance on luck, and game-breaking bugs or translation issues that hinder progress and enjoyment.
Excitement is driven by the game's fun, satisfying, and addictive gameplay, particularly its unique and original roguelike deckbuilder mechanics. Players are also excited by the appealing art, music, and the anticipation of new content and improvements.
Disappointment arises from a perceived lack of strategic depth, over-reliance on luck, and unaddressed issues from beta versions. Players are also disappointed by limited content, lack of boss variety, and design choices that make money or upgrades feel useless.
Joy is experienced through the game's fun gameplay, particularly enjoyable card synergies and humorous events. The appealing music, art, and overall positive experience also contribute to feelings of joy.
Verdict
Mostly positive
Summary
Positive 80% · Negative 20%. Score: 20 / 100
Positives:
- Players consistently praise the game's overall quality, finding it fun, addictive, and highly replayable. They appreciate its unique mechanics, strategic depth, and engaging gameplay loop, noting its accessibility and long-term appeal.
- The game's aesthetic elements, including its hand-drawn art style, charming animations, and pleasant music, are highly praised. Players find the visual and auditory design appealing, contributing to an immersive and delightful experience.
- The game introduces innovative and unique mechanics within the roguelike deckbuilder genre. Players enjoy the variety of cards, the depth of card synergies, and the clever interactions between different game elements, which keep the gameplay fresh and interesting.
- Players enjoy discovering and exploiting powerful card combinations and synergies. The ability to create 'broken' combos and achieve high damage outputs provides a satisfying and rewarding gameplay experience.
- Despite its charming appearance, the game offers significant strategic depth. Players appreciate the complex systems beneath the surface, which allow for intricate planning and decision-making.
Negatives:
- Players feel the game relies too heavily on luck rather than strategy, leading to frustrating and unavoidable losses. Many random elements, such as card draws, boss mechanics, and event outcomes, are perceived as overly punitive and unfair, often leading to a quick and irreversible collapse of a run.
- Many players find the game's rules, mechanics, and keyword explanations confusing and difficult to grasp initially. The tutorial is deemed insufficient, and the lack of clear in-game explanations for various terms and effects necessitates repeated trial and error or external resources to understand.
- Specific boss mechanics, particularly those that permanently alter card values to negative numbers or erase paid modifiers, are highlighted as poorly designed. These mechanics are seen as overly punishing, making runs difficult to clear without specific card combinations or leading to an immediate game collapse.
- Players report a lack of content, specifically mentioning a limited number of relics, boss categories, and overall game length. This scarcity contributes to a feeling of quick boredom and repetition.
- The core mechanic of cards permanently disappearing upon death is a major point of frustration. Combined with a strict unit card limit, players feel this system is unfair and punishes careful deck building, leading to inevitable failure after losing key cards.
Gameplay:
- The game is heavily inspired by Balatro, particularly in its multiplier-based damage calculation and score attack mechanics. It also incorporates deck-building and unit-based tactical elements reminiscent of Slay the Spire and wargames.
- The game's difficulty increases significantly after the tutorial and initial bosses, with enemy health scaling exponentially. Players can also increase the challenge through 'hardships' and higher difficulty levels.
- Gameplay involves placing soldier cards on battle lines, which then automatically advance and fight. Players must build decks to create combo effects and hit score thresholds, combining turn-based deck building with auto-chess and wargame elements.
- A unique mechanic allows players to 'pull teeth' from characters, which reduces a card's power but grants a random item or long-term power. This also changes the card's abilities and art.
- A core mechanic involves multiplying numbers, which can even result in negative values. Players need to establish viable multipliers early on and later focus on duplicating values for stable strategies.
Performance:
- Players reported significant game lag specifically when feeding pies to a hippo. This issue seems to be a performance bottleneck that needs optimization.
Recommendations:
- Many players highly recommend the game, especially for fans of roguelikes, deckbuilders, and card games. They praise its innovative gameplay, polish, and overall enjoyment, considering it a must-buy and a great value for hours of entertainment.
- Players who enjoyed popular titles like Balatro, Slay the Spire, and Inscription are likely to find this game appealing. The game shares core mechanics or a similar genre appeal with these well-received games.
- A small number of players indicated that the game was not for them, with some opting for a refund or suggesting others wait before purchasing. This feedback is less specific but indicates a lack of personal enjoyment or fit.
- While the current content is well-received, some players express a desire for more. Additional content, such as new cards, modes, or challenges, would further enhance the game's longevity and replayability.
Miscellaneous:
- Several players highlighted the need for improved in-game explanations, including a more comprehensive glossary for buffs and debuffs, better categorization of buff cards, and optimized translations. This would significantly enhance clarity and user experience.
- Players are looking forward to future updates and hope that existing bugs, such as the credit card discount issue and the 'gold halved' buff, will be addressed and fixed soon. This indicates a desire for continued development and polish.
- Players are requesting quality-of-life improvements such as a way to rewatch story chapters and a secondary confirmation for the 'Restart Game' option to prevent accidental resets. These are minor but impactful usability suggestions.
- Many players are excited to delve deeper into the game, with some having already experienced it through beta testing or demos. This suggests a strong initial positive impression and eagerness for more content.
- Players are interested in expanding the strategic depth of the game by requesting more card options and combinations. This indicates a desire for increased replayability and build variety.
