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(2 edits) (+1)

I play a lot of modern board games and I love to see board/card games in the wild, especially digital one like this. I don't play TCGs/CCGs or card battlers like this, but I gave it a shot.

Your game is probably the most complex game of the gamejam. (I would hope mine is the 2nd, but don't know) That is clearly the biggest hurdle. I had to mute the cool BGM to be able to focus.

I did manage to beat both Casual and Normal, but I definitely don't understand the game fully. It took me a bit to realize that the bottom-right is all your resources - It looks a bit like the background. If you do end up continuing this, I would definitely recommend a bigger resolution, more tooltips, more instructions, etc.

Also having the Flavor Text clearly separate from the Mechanical Text would be huge. The setting is very complex and that leaks into making the game more complex too.

Things I partially understand:

  • Combat is mostly automatic, except for the Purple People (Operati?) who can attack manually (Sortie?). The only reason why you wouldn't Sortie is if it is close to death, right?
  • I'm not sure if AP is something you spend or not? I know it is the objective, but does it double as a resource? I did not keep track of what I was spending too much.
  • The cards values seem super important and I'm not 100% sure I know what they all are. (I think) The Values on the Cards are: Top-Left: Money Cost, Top-Right: AP Generation(?), Bot-Left: ATK, Bot-Right: HP. For the longest time I had no idea how AP was generated. I assumed it was via the Purple Cards, but did not know what value.

Things I have no idea still:

  • I still have no idea what determines Money generation.
  • Idk what 'CM' is. I assume it's either a card or a card type.
  • There's probably many card things I don't understand. I don't know what "Rapid" means or probably many small details.

I haven't gotten to think about strategy or anything deeper yet because I was still stuck in the learning phase, as I assume most players were.

Edit: I tried Hard a few times, but it seems to softlock near the middle/end everytime. It happens during the Intruder Phase, so I assume it has to do with some Intruder card.

Thank you, this is the most in-depth feedback I've gotten and I really, really appreciate it. I'm sorry I missed the voting period but I'll get to your game because "complex" excites me. I've been working on the UI. This is what the new gameboard looks like. Also working on much better tutorializing and player onboarding.

Your cash ($$) and AP yield are determined by the operations and operatives you have installed. The cash yield is the number in the top left of an op card, and the AP yield is in the top right. 

Yes, an operative sortie is your only option to attack directly. And yes, the most common reason not to sortie if it would get an operative killed, but you can get more tactical than that, sortieing only on the turns the operative has a 'good target' and saving their secrecy by not sortieing on some turns. You can theoretically win by killing the enemy, by the way, when you sortie you can click on the OpFor HP, but enemies in the back row will 'block' your operative, like MTG. Occasioanlly, though, the timing of spawns and advances means there's no intruders on the back row to block and you can get through to damage OpFor directly. I uh, don't think it's actually possible to win this way in the jam build, though. I was aiming for "very difficult to get this alternate win condition" but landed on impossible. 

AP is spent to cast certain orders. Some orders cost cash, some cost AP, some cost both, for instance 'Engineered Commodification', the 'print moeny' card, costs only AP to cast. The AP cost of an Order card is the number in the purple box at top right. 

A CM is a countermeasure, the orange cards you install in board slots. Any permanent that's not purple is a CM. Most intruders have 'summoning sickness', but intruders with 'RAPID' start coming at you as soon as you spwan. Other than that it seems like you mostly get it? The only tricky thing is that cost is upper left for all non-operative cards, whereas for operatives, top left is cash yield, and top right is ap yield. So they're in the same places on the card as an Order card, but they generate resources, they don't cost them.

Thank you so much for playing my card game (I put a lot of work into polishing it to look slick and sound good that probably would have been betterr spent tutorializing) and giving such in-depth feedback. "What is clear to a TCG/deckbuilder player and what isn't" is one of the most valuable kinds of feedback I can get!