Hello Myles,
After trying a game I'm pretty interested in it but here's few points I don't understand :
. It could easily be an in-hand game only, which is pretty cool to think about it.
. Why putting aside the jokers and not discarding them like the other cards ?
. The breach mechanism don't seems too punishing ; I finished my game with one and it allowed me to have a clean win. I would have prefer to keep the cards above 21 aside, and for each successful purge I could get rid of one of those to try to have the best score possible, for example.
. There's not many informations for those Red cards ; what are the values, does the dead weight can count toward a successful purge with another drawn red card, etc.
. I'm quite confused about drawing from the bottom of the deck or Life Support, and sometimes drawing from the front. Can you please explain why it's so important instead of drawing the first top card of the deck ?
. There's not enough explanation about how you play or place your cards on the active play area or Airlock. Luckily when reading above 21 in your rules I picture myself playing blackjack so it helps a lot, but you may put more pictures if you can on your rules. It would really help the player how to setup and play properly.
. The win condition is a bit random for me, without too much player agency. And I wasn't too much pressured by anything during my play, there wasn't challenges nor a way for me as the player to overcome it. I rather followed a story and didn't know until the end how it will be. I'm seeking for more gameplay, more challenge, something that makes me stop and think. You had blackjack mechanism, but there's no reward to reach exactly 21.
But it seems to be a fun game, and I love push-your-luck ones like yours so, really looking forward to it getting better.
Did you made a Space Invaders card game rules on reddit ? The rules formatting are really similar to what I see there, but maybe it's only an inspiration.