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Hello! Thank you for making this Mr. ccdg; I've tried it this weekend & had great fun exploring your game.

I've only tried Adventure difficulty so far, and I've gotten to the point where I can almost always win.
I'll post some screen shots below to discuss.

My thoughts on the game as it stands now...
I am not necessarily advocating for any nerfs or buffs.
I think it's fine to have stronger and weaker cards/strategies.

The zero-cost cantrips (Helmet, Ingot, Geodes, Brush and Lens) are quite strong and can go in basically any deck. If I don't have any direction yet or I have a completed build these can be close to auto-purchase for me.
Ingot in particular guarantees good ore economy while asking very little of me in terms of deck construction or game actions (unlike say Ore Geode where I have to upgrade it or the tools where I might not always have the right mineral in hand).

You start the game essentially flooded on cards with insufficient energy to play everthing. This makes the card draw less than stellar, and it seems you really need to assemble some sort of synergy (like Sword or Mineshaft) to justify investing in card draw.

I've had very poor results with most things that cost 2 or more energy, including the Cat, Corkscrew, Drill and the expensive minerals. I think the culprit here is what I was just discussing with card draw - you start the game essentially flooded on cards and choked on energy. If you need special synergy (like expensive minerals + tools to mine them for you) you run the risk of not finding the cards at all plus the risk of failing to draw the right combination of cards.

I've tried several times to use the sits-in-your-hand minerals (that give you half the value and are retained across turns, sorry I forgot the name). Blocking a draw slot is such bad celerity that I've never had this look promising.

I've generally had bad results with the upgrade tools other than Prospect/Lens. I don't think there's anything objectively wrong with Screwdriver, Corkscrew, Aquifer or Jebroa but the fact that I already start with Prospect and it's already so energy-hungry makes it hard to justify other upgraders. If I'm building a big deck (so Prospect is lost in the shuffle and I might like to have other upgraders) probably I'm looking to spend resources on other things like Shield or Cat and I'm going to run into situations where I upgrade something and don't get to play it that turn.

Axolotl is my pick for the weakest card.
Early on you shouldn't really need +Scorium and later on the card typing (no mineral synergies) and lack of scaling are issues.

***
On to some results (with screenshots)

I think the starting deck is close to winning.
My opening plan is to Prospect both ore and score, trying to get one or two of each large while I dynamite the rest of my starting minerals throughout the game.
If I can get an early The Creature, any Amber, Scorium Meteorite or Scorium Pandorite (which cover in various ways the heavy energy cost of Prospect) I consider that a complete build (or close to it) from a single purchase.
I haven't played around much with pure Smelt but perhaps that's sufficient to make the starting deck winning also.

Prospect:
You can see in the screenshot below I struggled with ore economy (700 is incredibly low for a winning build in my limited experience), but with Amber Scorium as my only purchase I was still able to buy some hourglasses and dynamite and take a comfortable win.


The Creature:
Here's another victory with low economy, this time with a Meteorite + The Creature to help offset the cost of Prospect. I think The Creature is quite strong even without Meteorite, but the Meteorite helps keep up the tempo by allowing me to Creature and then Prospect and still have energy to play the Prospect-buffed card. In contrast if my only build enabler is The Creature I'm frequently going Creature then Prospect on a card that I don't get to play that same turn.


Scorium Pandorite:
This isn't my best Scorium Pandorite run (you can see barely 2k income; I know I've had over 3k) but it ended on the biggest Pandorite.
I think Scorium Pandorite is incredibly strong since your mineral upgrades effectively give you both score & ore. If I get an early Scorium Pandorite I commit to upgrading it heavily, which can lead to a bit of a lull in ore economy before it surpasses the base ore (which I'd have been upgrading before as you can see here), but then it really launches. The fact that I'm upgrading a Score mineral heavily tends to make this whole process feel pretty safe.


Sword:
I haven't played a lot of tools so I was surprised at how smoothly this went the first time I tried Sword/Axe. The Wrenches were quite bad because my other tools put the minerals in play where the Wrenches can't see them anymore.


Mineshaft:
This was a fun run but felt very unusual in terms of shop RNG. By the time I got more than 1 Mineshaft the challenge was already gone. I don't think the Mineshaft "combo" can be assembled particularly easily/consistently. More frequently Mineshaft is an early-game play for 10+10 resource generation and I just accept that it's going to fall off as the game goes on.