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Having some cards be rare is fine, but locking story progression behind acquiring them is only alright if there are multiple stories to progress so I am not, for example, stuck doing a hundred of the same fight over and over waiting for a Wendigo or a T-rexaur if I don’t want to. It would be cool if there was some minimum completion required to advance the main quest, something else to do for at least one side quest per town, and full completion to unlock the boss and additional story stuff.

If it isn’t intended to be occurring, my bet is that drafting the ranger pack unintentionally unlocks the rangers elements for events/ boss fights and for some reason Void is either getting picked every time for the boss event or I just rolled her three times in a row.

Honestly the game has gotten pretty polished. I like the new frame arts on the engine cards– the game-boy aesthetic for the fantasy set was neat.

After playing some more for a bit, I have some thoughts:

1. Elshey seems to be set to always be the boss now. For the demo this makes sense and is fine, but in the full game the boss being chosen only from unlocked elements is, I think, a better idea.

2. The ranger pack is cool, but the implementation is confusing. The rangers appear under their colors’ elements in the banning section, but interact as mixed (I think, it is kind of hard to tell if something else might be going on) in the game proper, except for coin inclusion which is based on the colors again. Regardless, they always cost mixed mana. I think it would make more sense for them to cost mixed mana if their element hasn’t been added to the game yet in a given playthrough but to cost colored mana of their color once their element is unlocked.

Also the black ranger is a ridiculously powerful commander because it returns to hand without commander tax on mutation. With the possibility of it mutating into the blue ranger (which is otherwise basically always banned), in long games it eventually costs close to 0 to play and creates a non-illusionary duplicate card you can use to fill your graveyard. I think the key piece here is that mutation cards giving you your commander back on mutation is very strong, and that it not even taxing hp pushes it over the edge.

1. The rules policies (e.g. New Rule: Freeze) were more fun when they applied to all units forever, not just those in the opening hand. As a balance, maybe just give units that already had that ability +1/+1 (except freeze, that one should probably be cost+1 once the refrigerators are back in the game)

2. I really don’t understand user dissatisfaction and how the banlist affects it. I get that the scalper is mad when I approve user requests to ban a card, but I don’t know why players get angry when I honor their requests to unban stuff, and rebalance the other cards to keep elemental power even.

3. I think elements should only exist in the game after you’ve released them, so seasons shouldn’t be offered for elements that don’t exist and policies except New Rule policies shouldn’t be offered that refer to mechanics that haven’t been implemented or elements that don’t exist. Probably the nameless ones pack, which refers to having at least 3 elements present on the field, should only be offered if there are at least 3 elements in the game and effects that randomize elemental identity should only choose from released elements.

It’s crazy if this still is a thing :/

I hope it’s okay to waste keys because I definitely wasted one ;_;

1) Yes, I was thinking of the Semi-Limited Notice policy.  I usually put a lot of cards at 2 anyways for balance reasons, so it is easy to get a lot back here, but it is not too bad.  The run I had before commenting I got it and also the policy that gives assets when playing limited or semi-limited cards in battle, which was extremely good but probably should be and even having the option to take that meant I had already gotten pretty lucky.

2) Yeah, I misunderstood the eye-markings to have appeared because I took a pack that needed no other Earth packs or something like that and I was wondering why it only appeared over the one mixed pack rather than both.  Now that I understand, it is a cool mechanic but I also think a visual indicator for packs that will break conditions would be neat.

3) You are probably right about the old Normal mechanics.  I imagine this plan is a good change, but you should probably change the dialogue that comments on Normal not really working with other elements and maybe being a bit too separate that one of the characters has a chance to give when considering normal packs.

4) I forgot mixed counts as all types even when not in the graveyard; with the new aura mechanics that makes sense.  By the way, the new coin system makes mill decks a lot less powerful, which is probably a good thing (the AI used to mill itself out quite quickly by playing coins if you let it, and I imagine it still would).

Played again and Elshey was the boss which I haven't seen before.  I would have thought she would be Void element, which obviously isn't in the demo version.  Anyhow, it was fun. 

Another awesome update!  I think the victory reward system for hosting tournaments-- that is, that you now make money if you win instead of losing less money-- is probably a more comfortable design decision for most people but is a little sad for me because I thought it was cool that as the card game company tournaments always lose you some money because you are the one putting them on and it's about PR and sales and stuff.  I like the change to policies where you pay money to implement them and the stats reduce the cost, but I think that losing your employee's stats while on assignment in addition to the cost feels punishing for non-revenue-increasing decisions.  Also the semi-limited revenue increase is really large and I don't remember it being that big but maybe I just never noticed it before.

I think the danger markings on the pack-picking screen are a very nice QoL improvement, but they are currently glitched to only show on one pack if more than one dangerous pack appears.  This is assuming that I have correctly understood the markings show up when a pack would cause a revenue bonus to fail if taken.

The new implementation of indomitable is very powerful.  Surviving not only effect damage but also in battle may make indomitable spamming effects like the taco shop a bit too strong, particularly since wind, fire, and water seem to have been nerfed (but I haven't played the new update very much, maybe I just haven't seen the new synergies for the other elements).  I think the changes to the jewel bug line are very cool, but they do make the creature much more complicated for new players.  I also think the second to last one has the hardest ability to activate, since having cards in hand or allies on one side isn't too bad but allies on both sides is tough.  It makes sense that they needed to change, though, given the proliferation of indomitable on earth cards now.

Changing the card series that cares about the number of element types present in your graveyard from mixed to normal makes some mechanical sense, since normal is the one element that doesn't remove cards from your graveyard, but thematically it's a little weird since caring about multiple types has so far always been a mixed thing.  Probably with more cards (i.e. in the full release) it can just be a part of normal's color identity, though.

The aura coin for going second no longer giving +1/+1 and having 1 hp is kinda weird. I assume the change is because the free +1/+1 was very good, but going second is very bad so I'm not sure it was unfair.

I don't know if it's real, but it seems like combat runs a bit faster than before, which is super super awesome and makes the game feel a lot better.

I finally beat the game with an A ranking, but I had to accept one failed attempt at hiring an employee to do it ;.;  I got the semi-limited asset bonus and then +10 assets when playing a semi-limited or limited card, which I had made all cards be, so I had a lot of money. 

I bet it's impossible, but if there was a way to have the different versions of the cards and rules you've experimented with during development as different versions of the base mechanic themes that the player has to decide for the company when releasing a new element or something that would be really cool.  But I think that would be more TCG creative director simulator than banlist simulator and also probably impossible to get working well.

Anyways, still fun as always, looking forward to purchasing the full release.

idk I find the space they take up in the deck is often less consistent than just more energy+card draw, but it's true that if you don't get unlucky they have a higher ceiling usually.

Mousing over the 'total' counter will highlight the counters giving it its score.  If your question is about the interaction between the counter in 47 and N counters, it just doesn't work for whatever reason.  Maybe the N's are theoretically invisible or something idk

I played the game a while ago and found it fun but only barely challenging enough and the addition of punctuation marks which I am certain were not previously present has drastically lowered the difficulty of the puzzles, which makes me sad :(

I love the pawn promotion sound effect for when you promote a pawn XD it was very funny

refreshing the page can also trigger the overlay without the text box, which may have something to do with whatever itch does that stopped me from getting to actually refresh the page when I pressed refresh (on firefox)

On a level where it matters, I muted the sound and the game concluded I cheated.  Clearing my cache and replaying it happened again, so I am guessing you aren't supposed to do that, but it's weird because the sound volume can't matter on any other level (that is, there seems to be custom behaviour that makes it work on this level) I'm not sure how the cheat detection works, obviously, but it is pretty annoying.  I would guess it was intended if the overlay went away after fulfilling the instructions, but it doesn't which makes the game pretty unplayable (or, at least, unfun).

In the time it took to type this and double check my assertions the overlay has now disappeared, so maybe it's not cheat detection?  It also triggered (and was fixed by clearing cache) when I guessed the wrong answer on a puzzle regarding pixel colors (I thought maybe you needed to change the target number via editing the page), which I assumed meant web page edits weren't in the intended solution space, though, so I'm pretty sure that's not supposed to happen...

Edit: Probably should have read the instructions.  I was trying to avoid spoilers, but it appears inspect element (and, I assume, page editing generally) is cheating.  That still doesn't explain why it would trigger just from scrolling the sound down, though.

Did a rook run just too prove pawnstorm isn't the only option (though it is obviously the best option).  Rooks work great as well, but you really need the relic for +card +blood on kill or else they are basically worthless.  With it, battery becomes a 'win the game' card, and random attack is very good, too.

Would recommend only storing the best score for each patron with each name on the leaderboard.  I feel kinda bad for filling it up.

Turns out you can have more turns if you play Aphelion, which is indeed a problem for balance, although I am pretty proud of my Grelman score being in the top 10 considering XD.  Wish I knew what the bug was-- presumably it's a way to get more turns without the turn count increasing, but who knows.

Fair enough.  I think I probably misunderstood the rule about not trying to always roll d12+d10, and should probably make more general skills.

Man, these adventures are *long*.  I've never had a character make it more than 3/4 of the way through, so far, but they are pretty fun.  I think the problem is probably just that I've been reluctant to game the system so I usually end up with 3-4 d4 skills and roll my d12 once or twice an adventure because it's usually something like "underhandedly fighting superior opponents" and the adventure is like "enemy: 5 minute wait at the supermarket checkstand, d8 difficulty 8 hp" so I'm stuck rolling my d4 "walking normally in normal circumstances" trait (which would be super broken if I ever took it at char gen) and my d8 "social peacekeeping" and I just eat like 8 stamina drain and 15 resolve loss on something the game probably didn't intend to be that difficult.

Very awesome game; would have liked to have more turns but obviously that would be a problem for balance.

Encore doesn't repeat the clockwise activation effect of the arrow thingy, although it does repeat the damage.

The clock is interesting but also extremely powerful, particularly since with luck upgrades you can kinda just pick what outcomes you want.

Stuck open and I couldn't close it

On replaying, no text presented on monster 2 so it's probably not tutorial related... not sure what could have caused it, then. The quest was to defeat an enemy without taking any damage.

Opening the quests window at the wrong time freezes the game, I think.  I beat the first enemy and clicked quests to collect the reward, but after playing the animation for collecting it, everything stopped being intractable. Could be tutorial-related; I haven't suffered through the entirety of the message-box-chain yet, probably. Game looked like it would be fun, though.

Are you supposed to get caught by the hand at the end?  It seemed like I beat it pretty quickly, and there wasn't any screen explaining the thingies I got out of how many there were, so I suspected the credit-roll was a fake-out, but it seems to have also reset my data (or, at least, the shroom west of start is back). I'm not aware of any thingies I missed, but the big white circle thingy above the single-blocks-over-water section was a little tricky to find, so maybe there were other things like that that I missed?  Unclear. Anyhow, the game was fun and the controls were pretty intuitive; good design on the platforming sections definitely helps with the blind reads.

Well, the art is there.  Good luck on making the game!

Glad to see it is still being worked on!  Bugs I noticed in the new version:
1) Witch potion refills don't seem to work on other witches (or the initiating witch)

2) Some blessings have the "infinite cooldown" marker that is otherwise reserved to potions.  They shouldn't have this marker because they are start-of-battle triggered abilities so the cooldown should never come up. E.g. Unbreakable.

3) Synthesis can be leveled up. It should be a blessing, or leveling it should have some effect

other notes:

1) Not a huge fan of the changes to potions. Because other cards can level up and they can't, all non-xp potions are significantly worse than a "normal" card most of the time. Even with two witches, throw flames will almost always be better than a fire potion, for example, and Armor Up is better than a block potion.  This is okay if potions are supposed to be mostly trash but the vestigial forms of cards that used to be good archetype support (i.e. mix mix mix and brewmaster) makes it seem like you might want them to be a viable strategy. I would suggest leaving the 1/fight restriction but nixing the 'never allowed to level up' restriction.

2) Quack drops a lot, which means it will likely feature as a single copy in most party's builds.  In general, monster drops can get a huge number of duplicates to the player pretty quickly because there isn't (currently) much enemy variety, and there's no drop variety.

3) Fights are significantly more rewarding than events.  "Good" events do something like one pretty-good level up; a fight seems to be at-least a level on every character.  I ran two witches and 3 XP potions so this might be a skewed perspective. 

4) I liked the random onslaught version better than the node-based map, personally. 

5) I liked getting to choose what to tier up into.  Starting at tier 2 with less diversity of class-power options is a little sad for me.

I actually always followed the random suggestions of my family members, which made the mutiny a little weird but still understandable.  Horse-Friend Champion Caring Learned Diplomat lady should probably be the family head anyways.

Sometimes matching and breaking too many tiles at once, especially with multiple armament procs, freezes the game. Otherwise fun.

Ok,it's actually just missing a ton of words and this was just the first super-common one I noticed. Game is otherwise interesting, but a terrible dictionary can really hamstring word games.

game does not recognize 'cryptid' as a word. C.f. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cryptid

Fun, but quite short.  Bottled XP is very good, especially on a Witch.  Hope it doesn't become abandonware.

Finesse doesn't increase combo even when the hand difference is quite large.

Kitten+Spiders (+monocle+juice when available). Buy Capacity whenever possible unless you have to pick between it and a broom/wing. Buy all brooms (you probably will never see a wing).  Buy +1 items and use them on the kitten if you have extra money.  For relics, you want Scepter (+6 to kitten), scales(+4$ per round), lips (+1 point per round per consumable ever used), and eventually the shopping cart.  You can use the last slot for whatever. Rerolling after picking an item gives you an extra item choice-- this is very good but you want to be careful about having enough money to get any good  consumables that show up (and/or charms), so I wouldn't reroll if it would put you with less than 3$ early, and preferably not less than 5$.  Rope(+magnet), camera, and parrot can all be back-up spiders. Kittens are pretty common and you want only ever exactly 1.  Take utility items (monk, magnet, juice box) or cheap points (cow, milk, cheese, joker) early if there's nothing good. Use the brooms you buy on your gold coins ASAP.  If the kitten is the only 2-cost item you have, getting your +4$/round is basically free.

Good luck!  Also I had trouble finding this and in the process ran into another amorphous+ genre swap XD https://mismatched-socks.itch.io/untitled-gloople-demo

Lol.  I gotta say, not a fan of the controls this time, though.  But it was fun enough anyhow.  

What's the formula for after tax profits?  And why does the gambler secretly only care about 7's being in certain digits near the front of the total price?

It was fun, but it ended right when I felt like it was going to begin XD  This could be the opening sequence to a very good puzzle game

made it with 107$.  Spent too much going to the cool princess icon only to discover it cost extra movement once inside.