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(+1)

Finally beat it. And yeah, the game feels waaaaaay too RNG. There being no re-rolls or locks for anything at all, means you're literally just praying for good shop rng. If you don't get it, well you lose. If you get it and get a single bad draw in an encounter? You lose. Basically even if you know what you need to do, you're just stuck doing it over and over until you get average or above RNG. Since a single bad turn in a single encounter just instantly kills your run with 0 counter play.

The difference between good and bad cards is just so massive that you can't really use fallback strategies to keep yourself alive until you hit what you actually want, either. Also deck thinning is obscenely expensive so you can't help consistency that way, leaving even fewer options.

A lot of cards feel like they are meant to be part of some combo. But the game is so short in terms of level, with such a steep scaling. That you can't actually ever make those builds. Because you'd just die while assembling them, before hitting critical mass.

There are a lot of options presented, but they are almost all wrong. Leading to a very "illusion of choice" kind of feeling. Where if you try anything even remotely creative or interesting. The game will just instantly kill you. Building like you're a miracle rogue in HS is pretty much what you have to do. And you better pray you luck into the key cards very early. Or you're dead regardless.

The game is good enough that I'm annoyed at its shortcomings. Which is praise in itself, in a way. If the game was bad. I just wouldn't care. But it's got a lot of potential. It just isn't there yet. I hope you do get it where it needs to go though, truly.

(+1)

Thank you for putting this into words.  It pretty well captures what I was feeling, except that I couldn't express it any better than "this seems too hard".

I disagree, I'm pretty sure you can 100% winrate if you play properly

I don't doubt it. But how many of the cards would you actually ever use? And how many would you never ever use, since they are bait? That's kind of the root issue. If there is only 1-2 "proper" ways to do it, and everything else is bait. Then we get back to the "illusion of choice" conundrum. That is my core concern for replayability.

definitely agree on that

Yeah, most cards are just outright bad. Then some have the illusion of being good, but are actually bad. And then there's Minecart. If you have any amount of payoff already in your deck (Aquafer, Wrench), then Minecart is singlehandedly the best purchase you can ever make going forward.

For instance... Smeltery. 2 Energy for 1, has to be good right? Well, if you consider cards and energy both a resource, then this is net 0 (-1 card +1 energy), with no other effects. So you essentially wasted your ore buying it. Furnace on the other hand, 2 Energy for 4 Energy. This is a net +1 (-1 card, +2 energy), and is crucial for building a "Draw your deck every round" engine. 

Other net 0 cards are fine. Like Ingot (+2 ore), Helmet (+2 score) and isopod (shuffle discard into draw). They don't harm your deck (0 cost, play a card, draw a card), give a small little benefit, and also contribute towards Wrench (great payoff card for engine decks)

But then you got cards like the anvil or whatever. +4 resource and +1 cost? Even for the "play a resource" cards like brush and glove, there's still better options than that.

There's some "okay" early game cards that haven't ever caused me a run failure like Campsite, Bat Cavern, and Salamander, but things like Furnace and Minecart are better than them.

I don't even remember a majority of  the cards because playing a card to get some ore or score while doing nothing else didn't need to be an action card, because we already have resource cards. The +1/+1 cards that only work if you have no resources seem bad, because you just always want resources to play during a round. Would be better if they cost 0, because then you could at least use them after playing all your resources. But again, other options are just outright better for that.