Lovely submission! I like how the art style evokes FTL :) I also like how I was able to play it only using the mouse!
At the beginning, something was making me think this was somewhat real-time, and that I needed to slot in my reactors in time before my ship started to firing automatically. When I figured out how the turns work, I also had some trouble figuring out the order in which the reactors would play out. When I got that, I had no further trouble with the game systems. The only puzzle left was that every ship I defeated “got away”. Is that intentional?
Anyways, it was great fun figuring out my strategy and building towards it. I figured out that fireballs were powerful, which was helped by the extremely satisfying giant shaking damage numbers that come up when using them. So I stocked up on those and, worrying about diluting my deck, I always picked the two upgrade options that did not involve adding cards to the deck. That strategy paid off, and I was able to smash my way to victory! Once I was at the endboss, it was great fun seeing all of my systems chain off one another. Every now again, the chains went off a bit differently than I had planned because I didn’t consider something, only to then course correct themselves again. That was fun as well!
Great job! Only wish I have left is a difficulty option, as seasoned deck-builder players will probably find this a tad easy. But I understand that balancing for a general jam audience is different from balancing for an audience made out of people who already play your genre :D
