This was a fun experience. I haven't played a tower defense in some time. I forgot how much I enjoy the genre and what kind of gameplay they can offer. I am not so much used to the card mechanics though, but they are super popular nowadays. So the towers you place are based on the random cards you draw from a deck. You have a lot of randomization of the adjacent effects, which you can essentially trade out for if you draw a better version from the one you have already planted. They get bonuses based on what their roots connect to (adjacent neighbors). It would be interesting to see other types of card plants you can draw to produce different effects. I like the nature versus machine vibes.
Do you have ideas for the future where you collect cards and or build your own deck of cards? That could be interesting. This game has a lot of potential.
As much as I enjoyed playing the game, I really wished the camera expanded out to view more of the level. I spent a fair amount of time panning around to see what was going on and you become lost trying to figure out what is happening at the various spawn points. Also I spent the first 5-10 minutes of the game not understanding that I could use the arrow keys (which I should have thought to check what the buttons even did in the first place but was so distracted by how to use the cards in my hand, that I didn't think to use arrow keys). I am watching the red trajectory line getting lost beneath my card hand, then eventually realized I could pan around, not just use the mouse trying to manipulate the camera. Which led me to see there were all these other spots to place things behind me. All this is more evident as the spawn points increase, but to me isn't obvious until after the first couple waves. Maybe even add a mini map in one of the bottom corners that shows the wave trajectories and spawned enemies as dots moving along the Mimi map so if the player is looking at one set of waves in the main game view, they can still see what's going on, on the other side.
I would also consider possibly shrinking the cards as they block the view, taking up like 20-25% of the vertical screen space, making it hard to see if anything is coming from that direction (bottom of the screen). But then expanding the cards back up in the downtime between the waves for more clarity. Since you only draw cards during the downtime, you would potentially have more awareness of what they do which could possibly make it a more viable option to shrink the cards so you have more visibility of the active waves playing out.
You throw a lot at the player at once (from how I feel, could also be because I am not used to this type of game with these mechanics)~ as there is a lot going on. But as you stick with it and play, you start getting the flow and understanding of what's happening and how things are synergizing with the depth presented. This base game has lots of potential to push even more depth and strategy where one could spend lots of time playing it. Maybe also consider an in game menu where you have an option to view the "how to menus" that you presented at the start of the game for the system interactions.