OK so as far as gameplay goes, it took me abt 20 minutes to beat this early demo. First and foremost, I like big numbers. This is a big numbers game. YAY!
Obviously there isn't much to do, YET, in this game. And the lower cost cards are straight up useless at the moment due to how the only multiplier card being a *2 multiplier also adds 4 effective cost. Why would you take anything but the highest cost card, farm the multiplied energy with Parrot (which is the best card in the game at the moment but i'm sure that's obvious), and then clear your entire field once you've farmed ~800 energy in ~4-5 turns.. since energy CARRIES OVER BETWEEN BATTLES, whether this is a bug or a design flaw i'm not sure, it means you can build early, farm effectively infinite energy, then hard pivot to only take damaging cards for the rest of the run and never look back. I'm sure you already know this stuff in terms of "balancing of the first demo of a game" so i'll shut up about balance, and talk about the overall game idea itself.
I like this game idea, ALOT. However, I'm unsure if being able to take every path will be a good thing or not, and the game has no punishment of any sort for fattening your deck to your heart's content.. meaning why is there any reason, logically, to not just take the best cards and spam them out in the same order every fight? Either every fight later on needs to have a unique gimmick against certain cards/strategies (think of the Boss Blinds in Balatro outright stopping entire decks bc they've built too hard into a single thing), OR, circumventing this by somehow having a hand system that doesn't break the game. I know Energy is supposed to be the limiter here, but there is no reason to not just farm it crazy hard early as i've stated before. Perhaps if you want to remove energy carrying over (given it breaks the game lol), add in some sort of card draw that actually makes the game feel not repetitive could be nice? In its current philosophy there is 0 reason not to just take the best cards, use the same strategy every fight, then move on. A side deck for 0 energy bannanas or something could really help this. Could even have more side decks to pick from of various 0 energy cards in the game, assuming that'd be an idea to even look into.
REGARDLESS; the game is fun. Simple demo obviously and broken atm, obviously, but its fun. A single boss that has a lasting effect on the run will go a LONG way though, and i'm sure you know that. Again I think this is visually inspired by Inscryption to some extent which makes me crazy excited to watch the game develop further, but don't stray too far down the same path- obviously that game is successful because it did.. basically everything right? So it'll be hard to stray FROM said path, but you never want a clone on your hands. I believe you can do this, and i believe you have something very nice on your hands- Best of luck and will happily continue to give whatever feedback possible!
Thanks a ton for the detailed feedback and the kind words. It really means a lot.
You pointed out some really important balance issues and I agree with most of what you said the "Parrot strategy" (first strategy on the game yay !) and energy carryover clearly break the game right now (even if energy keeping between fights is intentional).
I also totally see your point about low cost cards being useless the lack of punishment for deck size and the repetitive gameplay loop. These are things I plan to address soon especially by adding more meaningful choices during runs and mechanics that force the player to adapt instead of repeating the same setup every time. I like the idea of a side deck or maybe a more dynamic hand system too. Definitely going to explore that...
And yes this demo is super basic for now but I am really glad you found it fun despite all the rough edges. I appreciate you believing in the project and I am taking all your suggestions seriously.
Thanks again and feel free to share more thoughts anytime, it really helps a lot!!