As someone with over 1k hours on StS (and a huge fan of the now seemingly abandoned Buxom BE mod for it, still hoping the 1.0 release for that comes out someday...), this was a very fun StS clone that felt fresh enough to keep me hooked for a good while.
I only played this for Pearl personally as I'm not a huge fan of the other kinks (with the exception of the green fairy girl which is tolerable for me and I'm trying out now, she seems fun too), and I loved her route and cards, so I can't wait for Pearl's lvl 10 to become public content and see how big she gets (probably nowhere near the Buxom from StS, but uuuuh... hopefully big enough that using Assimilate becomes more exciting)
I like the addition of meta upgrades, making this a more casual experience where runs just get objectively easier over time, though it sometimes does feel like the game is designed around you upgrading those in order to be beatable, since without those upgrades there's simply not enough upgrade opportunities mid-run to help you beat the number scaling. But that's whatever, this is just a consequence of having permanent upgrades in your roguelite game as opposed to a roguelike, I guess.
The silver lining here is that while lategame encounters can feel unfair with little meta upgrades, if I ever feel an encounter is frustrating, it becomes objectively easier a few runs later because I just have better starting stats and objectively better cards.
There's definitely a few roguelites that come to my mind which DO manage to pull off the balancing extremely well to the point they're still perfectly beatable in your very first run and the meta upgrades are just a bonus, most notably Rogue Legacy 2, but I don't expect any roguelite indie to hit the same mark, so this is fine.
I also very much like the fact that this game is designed around limitless card voids/deck trimming and you just have a minimum card amount stat which is what you try to change mid-run rather than spend resources on individual card voids. That mitigates a lot of the RNG that makes or breaks Slay the Spire decks, and overall just allows event spaces mid-run to actually go towards something more interesting rather than half of them being card voids.
It also allows you to experiment with variations of a build within the same run rather than risking totally ruining your deck with one new card you want to try, since you can just turn it on and off at will. Very nice.
There's also the fact you keep your hand indefinitely rather than discarding it every turn, which feels good and somehow balanced.
My only real worry in this game is just it being locked to a website. Definitely an odd choice if I've ever seen it, but it seems to function well right now, so whatever. I don't personally like that it's online only and do wish this was an offline downloadable game. Though I still worry that this game may just up and disappear one day once it no longer becomes profitable to pay for the website's domain name (like when it's finished and thus no longer requires patreon support)
Hopefully whenever that comes around there will be a standalone downloadable version with no DRM, since by that time there shouldn't be any patreon-exclusive early access content.
I don't much mind the AI card art or spritework personally since it looks good (and I'm not insecure enough to blame all my life's problems on an imaginary AI boogeyman rather than the dishonest people who actually misuse these tools maliciously, which have always existed since the dawn of mankind), and the visual inconsistencies between the dialogue character design and card art design (like Pearl's hair) are small enough that it's kind of quirky rather than annoying.
Either way, this is really high quality for a free StS clone. I've played a couple on steam and this is definitely up there among the good ones. Cheers.
Thanks a lot for your comments! Quick reply regarding some of your points:
- I do intend to make an offline version of the game. Recent changes made it easier, but I'm probably gonna add some delay before publishing offline versions as the current system also doubles as anti-piracy protection. I of course want the game to remain accessible, and not have paid content if it's not being actively developped. Offline version just happened to poll as low priority when I asked for it on Patreon.
- Pearl's hair is a known issue. I'm currently reworking it alongside other inconsistencies as models have gotten better.
- Balance is still being worked on, especially higher levels, but it is of course based on meta-progression.
- I spent a lot of time trying to make the deck management feel good, and I feel like I've hit a sweetspot, except maybe for the sudden deck size increase each floor. Keeping your hand at end of turn can result in dead draws if you aren't prepared and card pools as well as game mechanics need to be tightfully balanced around it in order to limit frustration. Pearl is the hardest character to play at the moment, although I would think a StS enthusiast wouldn't have too much trouble with her.
You did hit a sweetspot. I'm impressed at how relatively balanced it feels to have such fundamental StS things changed like limitless card voiding and and all cards having retain.
Happy to have confirmation for a download release once patreon content anti-piracy measures will no longer be needed. Looking forward to it.
But huh, really? I'm having a lot of success with Pearl so far, and I assume there's a lot of better unlockable goodies currently locked behind lvl 7-10 for patreon stuff.
Card draw is already one of the strongest things you can build around in StS and its clones (and is outright necessary to make most builds work consistently, such as for ascension, in this type of game regardless) so getting what is essentially free mana for focusing on card draw and re-shuffling is very, very good, even if it is a little bit random. The randomness kind of stops mattering when your deck is slim and half of if is just milk bottles, so you're guaranteed to get several every turn.
Not to mention there's a relic that gives you benefits when a card gets replaced with another, which works with milk bottles. There's definitely some snowballing you can pull off there, and I haven't even talked about her infinite block builds which scale great with this game's equivalent of thorns.
I'd even dare say that I like Pearl's playstyle much more than Beryl, even though Beryl is really, really strong right now due to her mana retain, mana generation, quake builds trivializing everything in the game while also giving tons of block since you don't need to attack consistently... not to mention poison builds, which definitely feel inspired by the Silent from StS, though they take so long to setup that all my poison builds so far just end up turning into Gaea's wrath + Influx + Telluric Resonance eventually, since Beryl's mana generation allows for spamming this burst damage combo to end fights quickly and take out problem enemies first, and more consistently than drawing poison and block repeatedly for a while.
I like poison builds in StS, but they have the same issue there of needing too much setup to be worth it half the time, being outclassed by other better things that are much easier to snowball.
That said, while Beryl is extremely strong to me so far, there's one outlier I noticed... her starting deck. It's basically completely carried by her passive. Her unique card, Release, is... really bad early on, and gets outclassed even more during lategame. Since it doesn't count the first mana spent as an attack due to it being part of the card cost itself, if you run the numbers, there's basically no benefit to ever using it below 3 mana, and even then it's negligible.
It only REALLY starts outscaling regular strikes in the same amount at 4 or more mana.
Now, I know it's one card so you'd think the burst damage from one card draw could make up for it, but Beryl already has several cards like that which just function better for the same purpose of high-mana burst damage, and work much better with synergy cards like Influx and Telluric Resonance (Gaea's Wrath, or even Unleash immediately come to mind), so... you're only ever using it in earlygame. Where you will always have several strikes regardless, even though you ideally want to replace strikes with something else to trim the deck.
I don't think I've ever had a moment yet where Release did something that I wouldn't accomplish by playing strikes I had in my hand on the same turn, or just ending the turn to block and drawing the strikes immediately next turn if I don't have them somehow. I don't even know how I'd buff or rework it, but I feel it does need some sort of change. I don't even think nerfing the obviously overpowered Beryl builds would make Release shine more, it's just fundamentally not very useful even in a vacuum.
Pearl meanwhile basically has mana generation that scales with your draw/shuffle power rather than just being at the start of your turn, which is arguably better depending on your deck since Beryl's only scales with her level and by having/playing specific cards (which usually have vanish, or require several in the case of generating mana leaves rather than improving the base generation effect), not to mention Pearl's tons of great block + thorns cards, AND block retain between turns. Her unique starting deck card also remains useful throughout the entire run due to enemies that fill your hand with hexes later on. As you mentioned, under this system of retaining all cards all the time, you sometimes run into the issue of dead draws or having too many cards and not being able to play them all to refresh your hand properly next turn. Pearl fixes this for free just by virtue of her starting deck, and has direct upgrades to that card she can find mid-run as well. Very nice.
Feels like a bit of a mix between the Ironclad's infinite block + thorns builds, and the Buxom modded character's insane draw potential + snowballing milk effects, except without Buxom's downsides of getting too big stuffing your draw pile with bounce/immobility status cards.
...Speaking of, I feel like a Body Slam (Ironclad card) equivalent in this would fit Pearl very well thematically, and also slot into her block builds very well... I'd imagine it would hurt pretty bad to get smacked by booba weighing half your body mass.
Anyway, sorry I'm rambling, but yeah, just sharing my thoughts. Loving the game so far and can't wait for more. From what I can gather a QoL update is priority right now?
Would be nice if we had some soundeffect variety or maybe simple visuals for certain attacks. Maybe an extra music theme per stage. StS does these two things because the devs knew it eventually gets annoying to have no variety in attack sound effects between playing a tiny dagger card and a big damage slam card or something, and music needs some variety in a roguelike since you're guaranteed to be visiting the same locations at the start of every run.
I'll be following the development of this and seeing how it goes, can't wait for Pearl's full content! Sorry for the wall of text, and have a good day.