NOTE: when booting the game, it becomes stuck on black screen. spamming space lets you proceed to the game weirdly enough
Finished 4 runs, all ended with DODOT, i might not be able to finish the game atm, but i enjoyed the 2hrs of my playtime!
REVIEW and FEEDBACK
Art looks great and the characters are charming! But gameplay wise
it needs more polish. its a pretty simple deckbuilder but has a lot of potential if gameplay mechanics are to be expanded, especially that the game seems to use actual deck of playing cards.
there are some issues i encountered / stuff that i personally wish it had:
- your cards in hand are retained each turn, so if you had a lot of high energy cards in your hand, you'll probably wont be able to use much cards per turn (less cards to play, less new cards to be added in your hand) unless you do combos or skip turns. my opinions on this are mixed, but my experience with it is not that good
- Can't check deck / discard pile (at least during battle) so you can't check cards you played / cards that are still in the deck.
- no enemy intentions, making card plays a bit less strategic. Especially during a boss fight where their attacks are stronger, you will not be able to anticipate when to attack or defend (+ with the randomized attack patterns of enemies makes it much much harder artificially)
- the DICE as energy mechanic was interesting, but it also makes the run feel worse esp if you always low roll; battles felt very long because of this. (my DODOT boss runs were almost about 15-25 turns before losing)
- same dice issue, if you get a lot of cards with 7+ energy cost, you are mostly never be able to use it unless you have a lot of the pit stop energy cards (or energy adding cards) or by skipping turns. At most you can only play 1-2 cards optimally... assuming you always get 6 energy from the dice roll. its also hard to combo with high energy cards which makes them a bit harder to use in general
- No visuals for a lot of mechanics AND you can only see the tutorial once (i cant seem to find where to check the tutorial again)
- maybe adding DICE upgrades or allow the player to gain an additional DIE for each boss, so that decks with a lot of high energy cards makes it consistently viable
- the more you play = more cards you have, which will also make your deck inconsistent. i wish the game had a deck editor where you can discard cards that you dont want instead of infinitely increasing your deck the longer you play (since dying does not reset your deck, you'll end up with a bloated deck if you discovered this late)
- more visual hints / UI improvements that helps player understand how certain gameplay mechanics works (like the combo system, energy usage, etc.) would make the game better in terms of polish and gameplay flow
overall its fun and its unique enough to be distinct with other deckbuilders out there but still barebones mechanically speaking. Ill add this to my radar and check for updates from time to time!