Or if they got killed by reflection damage from a shield ... etc.
Game is basically unplayable now, SO MANY bugs.
e.g. it's extremely difficult to survive the 1st battle now. 3rd turn I had 3 monsters doing 6 damage base every turn, with special effects on top, and I had only been given one new card by that point. Very very lucky to survive.
Then I chose the altar as reward, but even with multiple weapons in the deck I wasn't allowed to put anything on it. BOOM! upgrade lost, wasted, forced onto 2nd battle with nothing to show for it.
Just insanely difficult to play right now.
I like the upgrade-between-levels idea. But I think you've gone a little too far in taking things away from the player in this build.
Much harder, which would be good (was probably too easy before) but this now shines a light on the problems caused by not letting players choose their decks. It's now all about the RNG, nothing else matters, you lose in the first 'level' 9 times in 10 independent of whether you made good or bad choices - just pure luck.
I think you need to give the player choices. Right now there's a tonne of coins that do nothing, just accumulate, and you don't allow the player to spend them (altar etc are one use, for no apparent reason), don't allow the player to construct/alter the deck, don't allow the player to make strategic decisions ... just smash them with the RNG.
Also it seems like nearly every card offered is a weapon. I got 3 weapons to choose from 3 times in a row, when I already had several in the deck. Maybe you need to rework the balance on that (or I just got extra unlucky).
Also: the hollow blade is now broken, it doesn't grow from adding cards to the deck any more.
Nice game, but desperately needs you to reduce the artificial delay. on. every. single. click. and. secne. change. it. is. exhausting. waiting. every. single. time. you. do. anything -- getting annoying yet? Yes, it does. Your fade animations need to be at least 2x faster, prefeably 5x faster - they add nothing and just make the game painful to play.
Excellent graphics, but the UI needs some work. Long compulsory delays on some text (why? Sitting there spamming the mouse/spacebar desperately waiting for your game to stop blocking input ... isn't fun), and something broken with the mouse sensitivity (I have to move the mouse 10x across the table to move across the screen, only with this game. Something broken in your mouse handler in Windows?). Eventually too annoying having to constantly move the mouse, wait for delays, etc.
Lots of good ideas here, and lovely presentation, but the terrible mouse handling made it so painful to play I don't think I can bear to do it again. Making this mouse-compatible would make it open to a much wider audience.
(basics like: dont make the player tap z, click 4 times because your mouse handler is guessing the wrong thing to do, then click z a million more times, for stuff that is directly achievable by the user clicking on things. You even have the popup context-sensitive menus already, so there shouldn't be any need for the 'forced keyboard' stuff)
18 is low :). Place a terrain die, wait a turn and place another on same spot, then use honeybee honey. And then use your mirror, with +2 boost!
+4 terrain -1 decay +4 terrain = +7
+2 boost = +9
+1 honey = +18 + 2xbase
+mirror (positioned so the +2boost touches it too) = +20 + 2xbase
then place a 4 attack for: ... 28 damage
Use a second honey and it goes to 50+ damage.
Terrain dice seem weak at first, but once upgraded they are super-powered. You need to know that placing a terrain dice on a previusly used spot adds to the counter, but does NOT increase the drop rate (i.e. 2x terrain dice on same spot is more than 2x as good).
With 2 gold terrain dice it's easy to get +10, +15 spots, which are so OP it breaks a lot of the game. With 3 ... you can easily cover the whole board in terrain +s. Much much more powerful than boost!
Great game, a few balance problems that undermine it.
1. If you get a "fleeing" enemy on the first room (or worse: first 2 rooms) you usually have to quit/restart, since they're massively overpowered at this stage and you can't kill them yet
2. Can't see how many food you have before deciding whether to campfire.
3. Can't eat Toasties outside battle. Died because I had 2 health between levels and had to bash the door open. I had lots of healing food + toasties in my deck, but game wouldn't let me use them.