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I really wanted to get into this one, but it's just far too frustrating for me to enjoy. It's great to see that you're actively supporting this game with new cards, but in my opinion you should really try to fix more core problems. Issues are listed in order of severity:

  1. Little to no interaction with the opponent. This is a massive missed opportunity. It may as well be Solitaire. You can't see their board or desired fusion either, meaning that it's impossible to know when you're winning. Having them play first would solve this issue.
  2. Any successful fusion instantly replaces your active one with no option to cancel, even if it's objectively worse than all other cards in your deck and fusions in the game. This has lost me dozens of matches.
  3. The game doesn't track what fusions you've tried so far in the current match, and keeping it all those variables in my head is really frustrating. I shouldn't have to break out a pen and paper for a digital game.
  4. The punishment for getting a combo wrong is way too harsh. Right now, the second component becomes active whether you like it or not. This has the undesired effect of not making me want to experiment with my hand, since if I get it wrong I could potentially lose the entire match. Either let me pick which component I want to keep on the board, or just discard the components altogether and let me move on with the game.
  5. There are no card effects beyond a flat appeal bonus. This is sad, as weird, card specific rules are half the fun of collectable card games to begin with. Without a way to draw cards, search for cards, or mess with your opponent, the whole thing just feels flat and lifeless. Why bother customizing my deck when all the cards are functionally identical?

Look, I understand you're not trying to create the next Hearthstone here. It might sound like I'm taking this all too seriously. I probably am. But even as a casual game about smacking cute bits of cardboard together, there's just lots of little things that get in the way that I can't just switch my brain off to.

The art and visual design are stellar as always, though.

thank you for such honest feedback! this is my first card game so it's very limited in terms of my design and programming skills--it helps a lot to know which parts are frustrating so that i can rethink them. i'll try to start incorporating some of this in the next update! (a few of them i'm unsure of how to program, but something like showing the opponent's choice first is pretty easy and i agree that it's more fun to be able to strategize with the extra information!)

Glad to hear it! The fact that you made this all in Ren'Py is insane. I can imagine that limiting your options somewhat. For something like this I'd personally reach for a generic game engine like Godot, but that's just me.

I could give you general help when it comes to programming some of those features, but when it comes to specifics, I really have to look at the source code to be sure. I've always used Ren'Py wholesale and never felt the need to modify it, so I'd have to look into that as well.

yeah! ren'py is the only engine i feel like i understand, so it's more like this is the ONLY way i could possibly make a card game even though it's not intended for things like this at all haha.

ooh programming help would be super appreciated--this project is on hiatus right now but the next time i end up working on it i'll definitely reach out to you! another commenter asked to be able to drag-and-drop cards but i was struggling with getting that to function, so maybe that's something that needs the help of someone with more general coding knowledge heheh

If I can find time outside of my own software engineering work, I could help out in developing a cute game like this ;w;

A game team I'm in is also developing a card game (but not as cute as this), so this is cute o3o