i jumped from the youtube video and first off all, i'm a great fan, love your work since forest runing in the labyrinth <3
I realy loved the concept of the chess-like mechanic, but i really like minimalist approaches, the vast options of cards made the game kinda open for some sort of dominant sequence (depending on the npc first instance), maybe making it less abbout diferents cenarios and more about one mechanic, like chess. The samurai sword fighting aura of those grey screen is realy awesome, it would fit nicelly in a player x player experience and maybe a simple set of movements (in chess there are two, lines and diagonal) would make the player feel smarter (as chess do so well)
Hope i made myself clear, my english is kinda rusty, i'm a brazilian game and web dev (junior at max), you inspired me a lot, thanks so much for that!