Hey I tried out a bit of the game (V1.5) I think there's a really good concept and I love the theming! What I found when playing was the following:
- The game was fairly easy the first couple times I tried it, to the point where I was worried that I had misread a rule (and I very well might have!). I might also have gotten lucky with initial setups; trying it with one specific Finch card I seemed to always use face-down did seem to make things tougher. I was able to win every game I played with anywhere from 8-10 Finches.
- Games are quick, well within the 10 minute estimated time. I think most of my games were around 5 minutes, but they started longer and got faster the more I played.
- I found that the majority of the time the only abilities I was using were the ones that either flip Cat cards back to Finch cards or the abilities that return Finches from the sky to a card. Ming does a pretty good job of herding the Finches into a big group herself, so the abilities that move a Finch or 2 didn't seem too necessary. The ability that returns 2 Finches from the sky and the ability that flips any Cat card back to Finch were my mainstays.
- One rule I wasn't sure of is when moving Ming to flip a Finch card if you needed to then perform one of the Cat abilities on that card. I did end up playing that way because it seemed too plannable if there were no Cat abilities happening, but it did raise the question of if Ming moves to another Finch card because of one of the Cat abilities, would that cause you to have to choose another Cat ability to use on the newly flipped card in the same round? In later games I played it that way but I wasn't sure if that was the intended way to play.
- I tried a couple games with some extra additional rules that made things MUCH trickier, though I don't know if these rules would make the game so constrained as to be too often impossible.
- If Ming can move to more than one Finch card, she will always pick the one with the most Finches on it.
- After you build the garden during setup, randomly determine which space has the Mulberry Bush. That is the space you need to bring all the Finches in the garden to (and at least 8).
- I didn't end up ever having Ming leave the garden. I'm not really sure how that would happen, unless it's when you use an ability that flips a Cat card back to a Finch card while she's on it? When I played my assumption was that you couldn't flip the space that she was on, but I don't know if there's any other way to make her leave.
- One ability I never used because I wasn't sure how it would work exactly was the Finch ability that moves Finches away from the Cat marker. Specifically "away" kind of tripped me up, since I wasn't sure if perpendicular moves to Ming counted? I am probably overthinking that to be honest.
I do play a fair number of puzzle games, so I wouldn't take my experience with the game's difficulty to be too representative of most players, but maybe a base version with a tougher mode/variant would make for more replayability and/or provide a broader range for different players?