Finally beat it! Having seen the boss at the end of the beach, I think all my runs would have beaten the game if I hadn't run into crashes.
The game is pretty good, and seems to be getting better!
Thoughts on cards:
Third hand was too strong at +3, but it's too weak at +2. +3 with a cost or limitation-- perhaps having it set your current available moves to 3, for example-- would be better, but +3 is probably fine since the power creep from the new cards is pretty high (mitosis, as an example, is better than pre-nerf third hand, and copies most but not all of what you could do with it).
Draw two is always bad now, and that's probably fine. It's funny because in most games it's super OP. Used to be good iff you had third hand, now you'd prefer mitosis instead of course (strictly better).
Although discarding is usually good, discarding on hammers is bad for you. Hammers themselves are still good-- maybe even better-- but only if you have no more than one in hand per turn. Card forge helps them a bit, but since they are very anti-synergistic they are no longer an archetype distinct from swords, which is too bad. The novelty hammer suffers from this especially, since its niche (the forest boss battle) relies on the ability to stack several of them per turn to make up for being worse than the single-target hammers most of the time individually.
Bows are still, and have always been since I first played, the best archetype by far. Double shot crossbow is even more better than the viper gun now that there are a number of useful reasonably attainable arrows to choose from, and it's probably the best weapon in the game, though some of the other legendary bows can give it a run for its money with significant investment. Having to have projectiles is a cool downside, but a VERY manageable one.
Projectiles are good because bows are good, but mostly suck otherwise. It's notable that both darts would be quite decent even if they weren't projectiles, which has an outsized impact because they are the top-tier projectile-class cards. Bent arrow is very good early in the game when you can't just arbitrarily have whatever ammo:bow ratio you want, but trash later in the game when you'd much rather discard than keep it in hand, at which point crafted arrow is better if you need something more than just legendary ammunition. Wonky arrows are the worst starting items, except they go with the training bow, the best starting weapon.
Daggers are sad. They wish they were bows, but they are trying too hard. The main two advantage that daggers have over bows are that daggers can be used as singletons in a pinch and daggers can play any number of cards with a single action. Unfortunately, both these abilities are quite weak because normal card draw is extremely weak (costing 1 play per card and requiring you to dilute your deck with non-daggers) and diversity is essential, limiting the number of 'extra moves' compared to bows you might possibly get, and daggers are very poor weapons as solo options due to their low damage and lack of useful secondary effects. Daggers also mostly don't ignore thorns, which is very relevant because they rely on making 4-5 low-damage attacks per turn. Throwing daggers can help with this, but only a little due to their rarity and the number of them you'd need to outfit a deck. That's not to say that daggers are *bad* as an archetype, just that they are much worse than bows; they are still quite a bit better than swords and hammers!
Summons are meta-defining. Every deck benefits from a good chunk of summon cards, though throwing out *all* your other cards is usually rather suboptimal. Summon cards are unique in that they don't take up space in your deck while they are in-play, and without thorns it costs at least 1 enemy turn to get the summon out of play. The training dummy was always one of the best summons, and with the buff to 3 hp it's even better. I have yet to find a deck in which it isn't an auto-include, at least up to 3 copies. Lonely golem is a great design for a weak summon card to have available early in the game (even the starting cards would probably be okay if the code could handle it), but it's obviously not going to cut it in a late-game deck. I like clockwork golems (and I liked them before the buff, too), but they probably aren't very strong, even post-buff. If they returned to hand post-draw rather than taking up space when the ability activates, they'd probably be more competitive with the other golems, though they still fill the powerful attacker niche pretty well. Clay golems are bad, but work just as well as clockwork golems 99% of the time. Health insurance is a scam; get Forest Golems instead. Forest Golem is the best healing source in the game, and with the buff they are amazing tanks as well. The 1 dmg/turn can really add up with multiple copies as well. Armor golems are very good as well, with a different niche, surprisingly. Their purpose is to increase the effective MAX hp for allies (especially dummies), so that low-hp allies can survive enemy attacks in the middle to late game, which is, in fact, worth the small negative change to ones effective hp/turn modifier much of the time. Smoke golems might not be in the game any more, but they were cool. Card Forge is essential to the new Hammers+Swords archetype, but useless otherwise. The turn o matic costs gold which is a no from me, but I can see it being good, objectively.
Health items and shields are pretty interchangeable. You usually want at least 1 health item unless you have particularly good forest golem luck, and a couple of shields is often a good investment. There are no interesting heals or shields, so you just use steak and small shields, then later bread and tall shields. You don't normally want more than 1 health item (though 2 isn't a bad situation to be in, really, or more than 2 shields (though three is okay). This is because it's important to do at least moderate damage to enemies most of the time, and deck space is quite limited.
Vampire sword is good, because it is basically a healing item with a cool effect (damage), so you can swap bread for it, but all other swords are pretty bad.