Thanks a lot.
A few clarifications / notes:
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“defence” works like this: when taking damage, defence is subtracted from the damage, and spent at a rate of 1 per damage prevented, but only if it was >0. So if defence = 3, and incoming damage = 5, then incoming damage becomes 2 and defence becomes 0. If defence = -3 and incoming damage = 5, incoming damage becomes 8, but defence stays at -3. I will try to re-phrase the explanation.
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The “replay” button on tutorial window lets you see the flashing animation again if you miss it. Were you curious what it does? Maybe you thought it does something else?
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It seems that you did not notice “Melee self” effect on Punch card, which acts similar to cost 1 in some ways, but is preventable by block, so you could play Block card before Punch to avoid this self-damage.
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Self-damage is affected by strength, so gaining strength should be managed carefully. You did see the “Brass Knuckles” item which mitigates this (but self-damage was not the problem this run, so your decision not to take it was good).
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The “Spring” card indeed appeared too early (i.e. you did not yet unlock the cards with Clockwork mechanics), I fixed that. I also delayed unlocking of Heavy Blow.
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As usual in deckbuilders, picking even a good card has downside of bloating your deck. In this game, you encountered 3 powerful card/item combinations, each of those could let you win. However, you deck was too large and you drew only 1 of them in your final fight.
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With deck this thick, game should have unlocked the “stashing” mechanics which helps to temporarily remove unneeded cards from deck. But due to a minor bug, unlock was delayed. Fixed that.
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The toughness does reduce card cost, so 6-cost Scales card pays for itself if you play more than 6 total cost of cards afterwards. Playing Scaled Skin + Muscles gives your 2 strength, which you did manage to pull off once. This combo is powerful but very expensive, and default healing in the deck is not quite enough to support it.
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You picked two copies of Feast of Flesh and did not encounter +vampirism card or item, which is unlucky. Feast of Flesh is “win the game with one card” level of power, but only if you have a source of vampirism. After unlocking quests in this game do a lot to increase your chance of finding missing combo pieces.
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You picked Flimsy Shield + Sun Shield + Bash, which is also extremely powerful, but needs card draw and/or more copies of Bash
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You picked Revenge, which you did use well, and correctly noticed that intentionally spending HP may be beneficial.
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The Second Wind card and Blank Paper item could help a lot with card draw.
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The “does-nothing” Boulder card has lots of uses. Simplest is to spend HP for Revenge, especially in combination with vampirism. It did not happen in this game, but with enough vampirism and toughness it may occur that hero is unable to spend HP even if he wants to. Another use is some cards (like Fling or Fair Trade), which do effects proportional to card cost.
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The final battle is perhaps still winnable. The key is NOT to play Feast on Flesh, play only Revenge on the first turn, and maybe play a Secret Technique on the second turn, when your hand contains several attack cards, to buff them all. Salamander Flameraiser can be considered a hidden boon, since it exhausts you cards, getting rid of expensive ones to free the space in hand. If you did not play since then, you can post you “autosave” (press export/import button in “saves” window), and I will try to check if I can beat it.
Thanks again, I gained some valuable insights from your playtest.