Thanks for trying and for the review!
The story indeed consists of 5 Acts of the plot, revealing, partly told through the card interactions! Each act has its own location (image), its own narrative device, and new information about the mystery. Act 1 consists of the Thrasline sprawl.
The game has 25 distinct obstacles (typically people, not always) across ~16 encounters. For each obstacle, there are unique story beats based on what kind of card you play (charm, reason, intimidate, calm), and some card types react to the surroundings instead of obstacles (plans, powers, hazards). So I wrote many lines of chat into it.
The game's difficulty might have gotten too hard by accident.
Thanks for pointing out the tonal style! I thought I managed to put in a cyberpunk and noir story, but the end result was "less retro" than I originally planned for (apart from parts of music). The story attempted to be more in line with the 80s cyberpunk writing than modern, but that is always hard to gauge.
Thanks for the detailed feedback!