Very cool concept, though given the mechanics are pretty confusing a full tutorial would be a lot more helpful than just the text given in the game description. The game is pretty weirdly balanced too, some enemies like spinderella are pushovers while others like sir squeaksalot can checkmate you without any growth if you're unlucky and they draw the disease thing as their first card. The boss is also very difficult, without having the cards from funguy and the one other poison card in the game you can't beat it. Also, it's pretty easy to go back and beat enemies after you take or consume their attacking cards. And i would also like to add that the "slow" effect is useless for the player, since you don't have growth. I kind of wish there was an option to destroy a card in your deck too, because even though the game punishes you for cycling your deck - there's still starting cards you wanna get rid of and it'd be a cool risk-reward dynamic since you're risking decaying too fast but you're able to get to your better cards more consistently. Would love to see this concept expanded upon.
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All very valid points. Most of them I am already looking to address in the next iteration. I do agree that Slow is pretty useless for the player as it stands, and the balance is all over the place, but that is part of the charm of a prototype, heh.
I plan to split enemies into groups instead of fighting them one by one. For example, in a fight you might face five goblins, each with two or three base cards and one unique card. The fight ends when you defeat at least one of them. The others run off, and you then get to either consume the corpse or graft the unique card of the fallen enemy. This then makes more sense for you to return to a fight, as you still got few goblins that been left for you to fight. Since remaning goblins still have the base cards, there is always a baseline level of challenge, but you get to choose which unique enemy to take out in the first fight to make the next one a bit easier.
A big change I am also thinking of is giving the player five cards in hand, like in most deckbuilders. Instead of using energy or anything like that, turns would alternate between one of your cards and one enemy acting. This should help shield cards become more valuable too, since you can choose to block before one enemies big attack, knowing you will kill enemy but delaying it saves you more health in long run.
Having multiple enemies also opens up a better use for Slow. It would be changed to something like "skip" instead. One enemy in a group having a card that skips your turn is not too punishing, and if you get a card that skips an enemy's turn, it becomes a useful and interesting decision. You would need to choose which enemy to skip. Slow would also be reworked to delay an enemy’s action in the turn order, giving you a chance to prepare for them or end the fight before they act.
Card removal is something I definitely want to add, but it is hard to say how much of it will be in until the game is more balanced. Removing cards is always fun and useful since it helps fix up your deck, but too much of it takes away from the challenge. A big part of a deckbuilder should be about building and adapting the deck, not just piloting a perfect one. If removal is too easy or too frequent, most runs will start to look the same as players just cut everything that is not enabling their strongest card. But if removal is too limited, it becomes hard to take speculative cards or pivot your strategy.
Thank you for the feedback :3