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Thanks for playing! 
Strong agree on the settings/customisation, I have added this recently but not sure if it was in the version you played
I also agree there needs to be more to get players out of the mindset of chess and more into scoring through chess. But I think it will also take most a round or two to re-adjust.

Regarding the Balatro clone-ness, does that read as a positive or negative for you? Especially compared to the other chess roguelikes out there?

Thanks for playing, and for your great words of encouragement!

I've had a lot of mixed feedback regarding the chessiness: both seeming too chessy for chess haters and not chessy enough for chess lovers... So it's great to get a positive view from that mid-ground I'm really trying to appeal to.

I'll be uploading a much clearer version today/tomorrow, if you ever want to give it another go ;) 

Great concept of linking time to goals, as it adds loads of tension right from the get go.

I also ran into the bug where I would quickly die; like your comment below I feel like that was from the upgrade inventory button becoming focused causing spacebar presses to re-trigger it.

The text wall at the start was also A LOT. I feel like the concept and mechanics can be explained in a few words, really. So making that first entry point feel less overwhelming would go a long way.

I could definitely see this concept expanding into other formats; from 3D shooters like Ultrakill or vampire-survivor style games. This format is also fun, and feels well suited to a minigame :)

Thanks for playing!

100% agree this version is pretty opaque with the scoring, and have been working on general clarity over the last week.

Thanks for the reference to Gambonanza too. I did find this game a few weeks ago and joined the open playtest. It's great! Fortunately I feel we have different takes even when drawing from the same inspiration (scoring vs surviving) but yes similar for sure. :)

Thanks for playing! Yes there's definitely some optimisation issues currently with the shaders, sorry it interrupted your session!

I'll give your game a go!

Thanks for giving it a go, glad you liked it! Yes lots of settings need to be added along with balance, more content, etc. Definitely agree on the volume!

Yeah the Russian is currently a placeholder as the title keeps changing and I needed a subtitle. I was indeed going for "mini chess roguelike", so would "минишахматный рогалик" be correct for that?

Thanks for playing and for your great feedback :) I agree there definitely needs to be some more clarity and work on round flow.

Thanks for the excellent feedback.

Thanks for your great feedback!

Accessibility would work for me, but also don't feel like you have to make it for everyone unless that's the direction you want to take it in. Naturally, I'm not really the target audience for this game so I'd trust your instinct and feedback from genre fans more than my notes. :)

Hey, very nice early systems here. The map gameplay is quite smooth and intuitive, with the conquering feeling very satisfying and having a good pace of progression. The overall vibe of music, UI design and sprites was nice too!

My major hurdle is the density of the menus. I understand some players like menus like these, but I'm not really a strategy game player so big menus with many numbers and little buttons are quite overwhelming. As such, I feel like my decisions turned out to be a bit more sporadic than carefully considered. Beyond being raw information, I think this is also in the presentation. The text is all central and quite small. But perhaps the info about armies, units, region etc could be slightly separated out. I'm thinking of how Total War games put units in a dedicated area so you can easily see who you have where.

Beyond that, I also couldn't quite figure out how to defeat the enemy armies (again, may be lost in the menus which I honestly found too much to fully engage with). I ended up just throwing all my armies at one enemy army thinking I'd whittle them down, but all my armies died and I felt pretty cooked from then on. Currently, it felt like I'd always win at taking land, but always lose at taking armies. Making strategy hard to plan.

Please take all this with a pinch of salt, as heavy strategy games are not a genre I play... I tried crusader kings last year and it fried my brain in minutes.

Overall, I really liked the map interface, conquering and turn-based pacing. That all felt great. But when it got into stats and menus, I got a bit lost and struggled to figure out why I was losing.

Please try my game if you get the chance :) 

Cool concept and pretty fun to drift around, while having that pac-man like hunted-to-hunter flow. The core concept is pretty strong.

Like others said, I had a few aesthetic concerns with the audio playing during pauses and the stark nature of the menus, but these are minor.

A couple of thoughts I had while playing:
- It felt quite strange to use drifting as a way to gather the resource required to attack, as after a certain threshold of enemies my drifting would almost always force me into them, so I'd lose health. So I wasn't totally sure how to gather resource while staying alive. And in that equation, staying alive is way more important in my mind. It could be that there's some kind of grunt enemy that you kill by hitting, and gather resource that way. This would also give you more moment to moment objectives beyond the charge up-kill loop.
- I wasn't totally sure what the enemies were? Drones? Tanks? Bots? The theme didn't fully come across for me.
- It felt like I should perhaps do some damage while bashing into the enemies anyway, without the boost.

But overall a strong concept that played well and could defo work as a larger game.

Please try out my game if you get the chance :) 

Playing as a slime was a nice role-reversal and I can see that framing a nice broader narrative. The systems are impressively deep and I can see all the work put into stats, inventories, and the flow of combat.

I enjoyed my playthrough but did get a little bit into a rinse and repeat formula of using default attacks then the character special abilities, and that only fell apart against the 100hp Knight squad at the first town. This felt like the intuitive way to go for me as using consumables feels wasteful against normal enemies, so my brain was trying to minimise resource loss while still surviving. In some ways I feel this butted up against the overall mechanic of having lots of unique items you use very quickly to overwhelm the enemy (after all my inventory had LOADS in it by the end. I could see a couple of roots here: either allowing the sale of items to facilitate level ups etc or the total removal of default attacks/specials to be replaced purely by loot-based attacks. Both of these would have made me consider and use loot differently.

The flow and gameplay was all pretty intuitive and clear. I would perhaps increase the size of the forecasting icons above enemy heads, as I forgot about them because they're so small and low contrast. Similarly some icons were quite low-contrast and hard to tell between their cooldown and available state. Beyond those minor things, the flow and my comprehension of what was going on was good.

As someone who's not a huge fan of this genre in general, one thing that would put me off would be the intensity of the menus. There's a lot going on when you enter the end round menu with characters, items and other things all showing up in panels at the same time, taking up loads of space and presenting loaaads of information. For me this is a little too much, but, as mentioned, I'm not a huge RPG or turn-based player anyway. So could just be me.

Good fun overall :) 

Please give my game a go if you get the chance!

Glad the vibe landed with you, it is a bit melancholic currently and I do like that. But I imagine I will shift to a slightly different vibe later on mainly through other music and perhaps stepping away from the black/white.
Thanks for playing despite your aversion to the genres!

Thanks for playing! Strong agree about the tutorial, but I'm glad the other elements came across. :) 

Fun game, very intuitive gameplay and I enjoyed the lighting effects. I guess the next step is differentiating this from other survival twin-stick shooters. 

A few thoughts I had while playing
- I wasn't sure what the red fast enemy did? Was he damaging me or just being a jumpscare?
- I couldn't tell how much health I had, so I still don't know if it's like one-hit kill or if I have a hidden health bar.
- Enemies continuously spawned in one direction for me (by the boss), which made sense but restricted my gameplay to just backing away. This could be fixed by adding some drops and other things to make me want to rush towards/around the enemy.

With more juice and progression this could defo be fun, although there's lots of competition in the genre. :)

Please try my game out if you get the chance.

The concept and atmosphere are very nice and chill, I can definitely see this appealing to a lot of people. It reminded me of games like Alba: Wildlife Adventure or Heartopia which have lots of camera minigames/features.

The low-stakes aspect of the gameplay was nice, but it did feel a little aimless. It could be cool to have a mini objective to take a picture of X or Y in a level. 

The biggest feature I was wanting was to have a first person view with zoom, so I could frame up some nice shots in the environment that weren't centred around the character. I think this would add a lot more variety to the game, and allow more objective based things. 

The controls also felt a little unintuitive on PC, but would work well for mobile.

Please give my game a go if you get the chance :) 

The narrative concept about venting and relieving frustrations is super nice. And the overall vibe and aesthetics show promise.

Gameplay-wise I found it a little hard to fully get behind for a couple of reasons:
- The amount of inputs required for the simple attack felt a lot. I was almost always holding directional inputs, space, shift and LMB--the ability menu felt a little redundant as the mouse controls didn't seem to have another use? Unless I missed something. I also stopped using the other two actions as they felt less impactful.
- I found it hard to tell where the player and enemy health was, so was shooting them without any real plan of when they'd die. And I wasn't sure if there was a way for me to recover health.
- I also wasn't sure where to go really
- Some SFX for movement, taking damage, hits, attack, etc would be HUUUUGE as well.

I think the main thing from all that is just clarity, as I felt quite confused about the systems. But I did like what I understood.

Please give my game a shot if you get the chance :) 

Fun concept, the grandma is a good asset!

It took me a couple of trys to realise I need to RELEASE the mouse for the slider to take effect. This feels a little unintuitive as sliding/turning a radio dial irl has immediate effects. It was also quite challenging given how fast you lose health and how the frequency changes felt random. I also wasn't sure whether there'd be a win state, or whether it's just a "survive as long as you can" kinda experience.

Please give my game a go if you get the opportunity :) 

I like the concept of building melodies and songs from components while the gameplay systems are pointing in a different direction. And the overall high concept style currently works.

To answer your questions:

- Is this even fun? What elements are engaging and can be expanded on? What elements are annoying and need to go? -> During my play session I reached brick walls 3 times, with a full hand and absolutely nowhere to place the cards. This effectively killed my run all 3 times, leaving me with no option but to quit (at least it seemed that way, I may have missed something). This felt pretty bad, especially after the satisfaction of building up the planet defences.

- Is the time pressure right? Too stressful? Not enough? -> Didn't feel it at all, as my playthrough ended due to hand limitations instead of time pressure.

- Do the card placement rules feel clear? -> Not really. My understanding was that I could place anything anywhere to start with. But after making a decision that planet would need only that type (O/M etc) and that slot on other planets would need to be the same suit. This made sense to me, but I ran into limitations when I couldn't discard anything or had to stack meaning my hand would just fill up no matter what.

- Is hearing your final composition satisfying? -> It was nice, but didn't fully pop yet.

- UI/UX clarity -> Quite clear, but the card formatting of the casettes really threw me off initially. I think cards have a lot of baggage when I/people see them. So when I saw a "M" of hearts it became a bit confusing. Thinking "this card doesn't exist..." I'd say it could be worth changing the aesthetics of the casettes to be typed differently (i.e. colour coded instead of suited). It also felt bad to have to draw my own cards manually, as it was a bit tedious.

- Bug reports -> No bugs but my run was soft locked each time by a full inventory and seemingly no way to clear duplicate or deadweight cards. The main menu also felt a little strange as clicking "new game" didn't start a new game--it was the button next to it. haha.

Cool concept and nice spacey aesthetics.

Please give my game a go if you get the chance :) 

Thank you for playing and for the feedback. Yes, the box was a recent addition which hasn't yet got enough of a tutorial. But the easy way to think of it is like your deck, in a deck builder :) 

Thanks so much for your feedback!

Ah I see, well if you wanted to go for a more random-based game I think that could be possible. But then I think you'd want to draw more inspiration from idle games; so that the player's gameplay is about being a football manager (so getting all the cards together, making trades, etc) then the matches can play out relatively quickly WITHOUT any player input. That could be a way towards having the core RNG remain (if I understood you right).

I think the main issue with the RNG right now is that the game is saying "actively play" by making me click to reveal cards but if my expectation is set up to be "this part is totally out of my control", then that issue falls away. 

In other words it's all about setup and expectation. The current version made me feel like I was a player drawing from a deck. But if that expectation is shifted to being a manager creating the deck, then it could definitely work. Football manager games are popular with a particular niche, after all.

I could see this being a great ironic party game (or maybe minigame) where you're all trying to run to the other side and don't know where the mines are. Also got a lot of potential as a meme game. Either path I would say some more varied environment and movement options (jumping, sprinting, etc) would go a long way. 

The combination of the thumbnail gif and title definitely caught my eye and made me chuckle.

Please try out my game if you get the chance :) 

Interesting concept which I could see being very popular, and cool to see the inspiration from the Amiga game.

Currently it's a little hard to assess, as I feel there isn't really any player expression in the game--at least in my playtest. The cards were dealt randomly and I could only turn them over randomly, so the actions I took during my turn always felt totally random, and I couldn't craft a strategy about what to do. Dealing the cards face up could help this allowing the player to string together actions meaningfully, while retaining the deck builder RNG.

It also felt a bit unfair as the opponent appeared to always have many more cards than me, so I felt hopelessly doomed to fail.

Menus, graphics and information are also quite hard to read currently as there isn't much hierarchy, but I understand this is very early.

Like another commenter I also had the feeling assets were AI, which was kickstarted by the thumbnail which is very uncanny and feels generated. This generally doesn't feel great especially when they are the only assets in the game. So unifying a visual style (even if it's all placeholder) would make a big difference user wise.

Ultimately, it's a cool concept that could be fun. But currently the very heavy RNG and lack of player information is a bit of an obstacle.

Please try my game if you get the chance :) 

Really liked the educational angle of this game, with the very specific references. It was very satisfying to see the population grow and thrive.

I left a response via your form. Like I mentioned there, I felt the most effective strategy was just to spam place everything as much as possible (which stopped me thinking strategically). It could be cool to see ecological thinking emerge in the game systems, making the best strategy about management and balance between the Moa and the different other species of plants and animals.

Really like the concept and the cute animations!

Please give my game a go if you get the chance :) 

Nice concept and world building! I love the UI of the book and creatures in particular.

I'm not sure if I missed something, but I was only able to catch one fish (the salmon), and then couldn't seem to find any more after giving it to the Palace character. So, if there is more some further direction could be cool.

If you haven't I would suggest looking into Dredge, which makes fishing fun and varied via simple but different minigames for different types of fish. 

A few other small things that came to mind:
- The opening text was hard to read as it was justifying while typing out (so words would move). Make sure the text is fixed while typing so reading is possible.
- The camera felt very close (at least for me, it looks better in your screenshot), so I would suggest pulling it back considerably, and making the boat smaller so it takes up less visual space.
- I would also agree with the other commenter that it was unclear how things would develop. So it could be worth making the hook of the game (pun intended) clearer.

Nice early build with strong design and real character!

Please try out my game if you have the time!

Thanks for playing! 
Without a proper tutorial the game can be a little confusing in its current state, but hope you had fun!
And yes, I will defo add some options to remove/reduce the visual effects.

Thanks so much for playing! :) 

Sadly history was history  ¯\_(o.o)_/¯
But we can change our futures!

Thanks for playing! 

¡No pasarán! indeed!

Thanks for playing! :) 

Thanks for playing, please share it with your friends!

Wow, I'm flattered by the comparison! Thanks so much for playing :)

Thanks for playing!

Super fun experience, great art style and immediately engaging! Could be cool to have some instruments be bought with points, to help the sense of progression. Really enjoyed it, and could see it being really fleshed out to have you build and manage a whole festival!

Thanks! As I'm someone pretty from maths myself, I'm glad it still felt good! I wanted to dive into more complex knots, knot theory and a more educational angle, but the physics challenges were enough to melt my brain... haha. 

Haha, while testing I got pretty good with the controls. A longer string will allow for more complex knots, but I kept the length short-ish for web performance. So I'll add in after the jam!