This is a great game and I've come back to play it repeatedly. A+ on the sound design, perfect music, the rolling and interaction sounds are satisfying. A bit heavy on the amount of clicking to move dice but the UI is otherwise great. The push-pull between trying to make money while satisfying client requirements makes for interesting decision space.
I did run into a bug(?) with the customer who requests "at least one cat" - they seem to *only* accept cats in their box, which makes them easily the worst client and not worth satisfying the requirement.
The garden dice seemed underwhelming to me. There are no clients who require flowers or garden dice, only ones who hate them and on top of being some of the lowest average dice face values, they feel bad to get as both temp dice or end of round bonuses. This also makes the Garden dice bonus box pretty unappealing too. I never take them if it can be avoided.
Dragons are extremely powerful as one would expect of a multiplier, especially since they often come on dice with a 20 point face. The 18 dice box is poor early game but becomes very powerful late game. I did not find much use in the 2x sticker box (esp. with a "no stickers" client in the pool), and rarely with the reroll box - okay very early but otherwise a never pick due to having too low a scoring potential with only five dice slots.
Cat and Mouse have good potential but birds/berries and dogs/sticks just feel bad. They're okay for some early game temp dice but very quickly fall off in utility, and are underpowered compared to the "get a temp dice for each filled slot" box.
However given the insanely short development cycle for this game I can't really fault any of the (minor) balance issues, you should be really proud of what you've made!
I've gotten up to day 37, and my best box was worth $1688. (screenshot was a little before the final count, didn't time it right.)
I love retromine, it's one of the games I come back to play over and over. It does feel like there are only a few viable deckbuilds that can win the game, notably with draw (esp. free), and Gold Mine/Wrench.
I ran into a weird bug while drawing my whole deck that made these placeholder cards that got frozen in the background and couldn't be played. They only lasted that round but interfered with drawing cards or sometimes got drawn out of the deck after a shuffle.
I really liked the early gameplay loop, a bit of work to get going but then it snowballs quickly. Had a few issues; the gem/treasure collection noise would not stop at a certain point when the whole container filled up, and would dearly love a "leave mine" button because at a certain point it becomes impossible to run out of stamina. It seems a bit strange that fewer rocks/extra dirt layers show up the deeper you go; I would expect it to get harder not easier to mine layers and there to be better rewards further down, but the item pool seems consistent. That'd incentivize buying the tool upgrades.
A really good framework to build a game on though! I had fun.
+1 for please add an option to disable the screenshake. Had difficulties aiming at the spot I actually wanted to mine a lot; would be nice if that was pointer driven (like Stardew Valley - you'd still have to be fairly close for it to work). The artwork and seeing the gems drop into the sidebar was my favourite part. <3
I'd love to see more cards and maybe farm layouts or challenges, but even as it stands the core gameplay loop here is very satisfying. Bottaries are definitely the most powerful build.
