Tiny suggestion:

Please change the coloring on the recycle button to reflect whether you already used it.  It is always gray, though it does change to a nice blue when you drag your card on it.

Maybe green for unused, and gray for used.

Some of the Beast cards, at least, aren't balanced the same way the player cards are. 

For example, the Ghram Rager costs 1 Momentum for a 1,1 and it has Charge, a powerful ability that is the equivalent of a free turn. To get a refresh, the player needs to spend a card that, from what I've seen costs momentum and penalizes the target card. 

There are cards that cost less than their attack and health values in the player deck, such as they might be 4 momentum for a 4,5 or a 5,4 but they usually don't have any abilities. Enforcer seems well balanced at 5 for a 6,6 with an ability that troublesome, AND it can't get onto the table for a couple turns even if the player takes advantage of obstacle benefits.

I did read a tool tip or something that suggested I could discard to improve my momentum but I haven't seen a way to do it.

Ghram Rager would be more balanced if it cost 3 momentum, so that if it is played on the first turn, it's the only play aside from the 0 cost cards. I do understand that the advantage of the Beast suit is low cost, rapid deployment cards the player must keep in check or risk getting overrun by. 

On another note, I think the obstacles could be enhanced by providing a form of cover for cards behind them. The game is considering them as under the player's control, if I have a creature behind one it cannot attack it because "only the creature farthest in front may attack." Similar to taunt, obstacles could protect characters behind them from creature and commander attacks, aside from fliers or special commander attacks. 

Not sure if that's within the scope of your design, but since the character behind the obstacle cannot attack it, it would be nice for it to provide an advantage.

On another note, I think the obstacles could be enhanced by providing a form of cover for cards behind them. The game is considering them as under the player's control, if I have a creature behind one it cannot attack it because "only the creature farthest in front may attack." Similar to taunt, obstacles could protect characters behind them from creature and commander attacks, aside from fliers or special commander attacks. 

This is already in the game.  It just happens that you have always been playing melee followers.  There are followers with the Sniper ability.  Those followers can shoot from behind rocks and behind other followers.  There are also flying units, (flying ability) that ignore obstacles.

Some of the Beast cards, at least, aren't balanced the same way the player cards are. For example, the Ghram Rager costs 1 Momentum for a 1,1 and it has Charge, a powerful ability that is the equivalent of a free turn. To get a refresh, the player needs to spend a card that, from what I've seen costs momentum and penalizes the target card. 

You think Beast cards are overpowered?   I find them quite comparable to the other cards.  I recruited some Ghram Ragers, I didn't even put them in my deck, I had better things.  It is a 1/1, so you are wasting a whole card, to put a 1/1 on the board.  The only thing it trades well against, is if an enemy drops a 3/1 or 4/1 follower.    I think its quite easy to keep board control in fights against Beast enemies.

Enforcer seems well balanced at 5 for a 6,6 with an ability that troublesome, AND it can't get onto the table for a couple turns even if the player takes advantage of obstacle benefits.

Enforcer is one of the most Overpowered cards in the game.  The ability it has (damaging stuff around it) is actually a huge bonus.  Being able to clear obstacles with it, and thus open up new lanes for followers to use, saves you from attacking your own obstacles.  A 6/6 for 5 momentum is already ridiculous...  and then it has a very good ability.  I include Enforcers in every deck I've made.    I once had 6 of them in my deck at one time.   

Have been taking notes during my playthroughs, so here's what I have so far. Mostly going into the things I noticed that I feel are weird/buggy/typos. I loooooove the game, that's why I focus on  the things I think can use some work to make it even better. Special props btw to the new paths you can discover while you travel. Really like that added touch.

Notes:
- Feel like it's not obvious enough yet when you level up your Leader. Would make more sense to show the earned XP, and how that stacks up to how much you already have/still need, after a battle
- It took me a while to figure out that items you buy that raise Hope need to be shared through the Inventory system. Seems extremely convoluted. Why not have it shared when you buy it, or loot it, like Food and Batteries?
- After you've recruited new followers in a campsite the option remains visible to recruit more followers eventhough it's not truly possible anymore. Same goes for Teachers. Text there even shows you 'This teacher has taught you everything they know'
- Shouldn't you be able to attack Obstacles with Leader cards?
- Guess improved AI is on the docket but it can act pretty strange atm. Not using its attack when it has the Charge ability. Sometimes not attacking with (all) units when it's their turn. Making stupid decisions, like attacking and then afterwards playing +1/+1 on that same card.
- In the event where the first sentence is 'The sun had barely risen above the horizon...' where you can recruit a man and two children it shows two times 'Invite them', but for one option you need 11 Altruism. The regular 'Invite them' also recruits them, so no use for extra option.
- Seen several typos in my playthroughs, don't know if you want me to keep track of them or if you get to going through all the text at a later time anyway?
- Do you not get to see the value of a weapon before you sell it? Don't really get why there's a dismantle option in your Inventory menu when you can also sell them.
- There's a case of text covering up other text with the Poison Dagger. 'Permanent, Positive' disappears a little behind 'Beast Reinforcements'. I'm playing on 1920x1080.
- When you have only Food or Hope, but not both, they still both show up red when you click on a new location to go to. Would look nicer if the one you still have some of would have the normal color.
- The 'Infect' Leader card doesn't work? Can't seem to use it on any unit.
- It seems like when you get a human enemy to surrender it's always the best option to execute them, since it will give you loot from their corpses and loot from winning the match, making the other options a bit useless when an attempt to recruit them can fail (only tried recruiting once).
- The way the game works atm, with opponents retreating fairly quick, there's no use for high-momentum cards. I had the Avatar card in my deck, but never got to a point to use it.

These are my notes after 2 full playthroughs. As said, the game is brilliant! Every scene is worthy of hanging on my wall as a print (giving a hint here that I'd love to be able to buy a print at one point :D).

When using "Heal Wounds" to heal your followers, how many wounds does it actually heal?

I thought at first that it healed 1 wound on every follower.  But later on, when I had an insane amount of followers, I noticed that this is definitely not the case.  

I did 3 heals, and barely any of my followers got healed.  If it healed all of them of 1 wound each time, all of them would have been cured.

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Flying units can't fly over their allied units, only over enemy units?  Seems a bit strange to me.

In a few conversations in various places, the concept of card combinations as a threshold for the power or "permission" for the AI to do certain things has come up as part of the game design. 

My impression of the AI strategy and behavior, and what I've taken in from various conversations, leads me to suggest that it may be wise to thicken up the AI decks and introduce routines for sub-optimal play.

What I think may be happening is the enemy player is recycling anything too expensive to play, playing everything they can play as fast as they can play it, which is usually direct damage and reinforcement cards, and building up very effective combos as a certainty and deploying them as soon as it is a valid choice. 

The highly overlooked but very special game AI War is considered to contain an "Emergent AI." A 4x type space strategy game in which the enemy group is much more powerful than the player, but what makes it Emergent is that the way the AI chooses and develops strategies. Reportedly, even so many years after it came out it still produces stratagems the developers never intended or programmed into it. From what I understand, this is accomplished by having the Enemy use only observed information about the player and their activities, determine what a perfect strategy would be against the observed model, and then regress the perfect strategy to be less than perfect, ie, imperfect strategies, openings, etc. I think they also include a level of commitment to fighting the player based on how annoying the player is to the AI's goals, which determines what the fight model looks like. 

All that being mostly academic, relevance to Nowhere Prophet would be mixing up the optimal builds and play styles of the enemy decks, so that I don't know exactly what I'm up against. Beasts have been a focus of my attention for balance suggestions, for a few reasons. We talked about game balance at the beginning of the game, and making the beginning of the game accessible. The first milestone might therefore be the milestone at which the player feels they have a grasp of the game and are ready for tougher encounters. Beasts are also a target the player seeks out for their food rich payout. If I have no food, and I can choose between beats and *literally anything else* I choose beasts. 

Things beasts aren't doing at the moment, as far as I've seen, that they could be doing, are things like stealth, and one turn flight. A sneaky panther-esque animal, or a chameleon skin type thing. If winged creatures aren't appropriate for the beast deck or are planned for an insect swarm deck, then an "on incite gain flight for one turn" or "fury: gain flight for one turn" or a Leader card that gives flight for one turn would represent a savage bestial leap, allowing the horde to pounce over barriers. 

Tying in what I was saying about AI War and Emergent AI relies on how the AI determines what it does next. I've only caught a few glimpses behind what might be the curtain, so I really can't speak to what you guys are using. The AI seems to make some good decisions, and some bad decisions. Playing to the field much of the time is good at the moment, as it allows for more playtesting of the way cards work. 

I've seen the AI use a field full of chargers to move them around or smash up obstacles instead of attacking me or my followers. I've seen the AI provide a buff to a creature that just finished attacking me.  I've seen the AI place a creature in front of another creature that just refreshed. So some of this logic appears to be random. 

Giving the AI a clear understanding of grand strategy for a game like this is super challenging, particularly if you want it to be able to anticipate player moves or provide an interesting opponent. 

I'm certain you guys have a system already in place, and I haven't identified precisely what it is just yet. Giving the AI patterns of behavior based on what it has or what the player has done, such as "mitigate available attacker with if available attacker if then available direct damage card loop or place taunt defender exit." But the game is deeper than the current turn, which is why it is attractive. All the parts of its complexity that make it an enjoyable game to play, of course, make it challenging to develop AI for. 

This post is getting super long, so I'm gonna end here and pick up this concept elswhere.

General suggestions/opinions below: 

(Also: LOVING this game so far - artwork is beautiful, combat is fun/smooth, story aspects are awesome, cards are awesome).

Suggestions for Deck Builder feature: 

When you are in the deckbuilder and hovering over waiting for them to appear, they appear directly over the cards in your current deck. Moving these hovers to the left would be beneficial in looking at cards easier. Also clicking these cards doesn't do anything. Its not exactly clear how to add/remove cards from your deck at first. Maybe clicking a card in the right hand column to remove would make this easier for the user. And clicking cards in your library would add them to your deck would speed this up. 

Difficulty - 

I think the difficulty level of the game is pretty tough as of now. I know its a rougelike and its supposed to be challenging but i think the AI difficulty level scales up considerably once you get to the second map and becomes REALLY hard. I've played this game about 8 times and have only finished till the end of the early access campaign twice.  60% on losses due to resources, 40% due to battle.

Resources -

This  is my least favorite part of the game as of now and overall i think needs to be more balanced. Losing this way after getting some great cards is really tough. Not being able to reload at the beginning of your existing map and having to start from the beginning feels bad. If you're working towards a good deck, this can be erased by resources depleting because you're fighting too much or taking the long way to the end. Might be cool if their was an alternate mode or something? Like casual mode and rougelike mode? Thoughts.

Saving:

Sometimes when starting a few of the first points on the map the "enter combat mode" screen freezes which forces the player to exit to the menu manually. When trying to load from this position, the save state is corrupted, not allowing you to pick up where you left off. If you had a good start, this can be a bummer. Probably a bug but i figured was worth mentioning. Otherwise, after the first couple of points of the map are reached, this doesn't happen at all and saving works fine.

Tablets/Phones - general thoughts

Not sure if this is on the roadmap but i feel like this game would play great on tablets and smartphones. Honestly, this would be my favorite phone game were it available for me to play on the train every day.

Overall I'm really LOVING the game though. I never leave feedback like this for games in dev but i can see myself playing this game a lot upon its final release. Really excited to see the final product and evolution of the game!

Hey everyone, just bought the game and played for a few minutes. A couple of things I wanted to note.

I soft-locked on the first combat I attempted. I believe the music change, but I didn't go to the combat screen. I quit out to the main menu, resulting in a corrupted save. After starting a new game, everything was fine. Although he doesn't show this in the video, I suspect this is the same thing that happened to Splattercat, because when he started a new game it picked up in the exact same spot.

I'd like an option to decrease the time required to hover over a card before the large version pops up. It feels very slow right now. This MAY be because I am playing on an old Mac mini / potato, but everything else feels so smooth, I don't think that's the case.

Just an initial impression thing that I'm sure I'd get used to, but my brain kept trying to tell me red was damage, not health. Consider a change to green? 

Looking forward to diving deeper.

if that's the way Hearthstone does it, makes sense to follow their lead (I played briefly ages ago). As I said, not a big deal and I'm sure I will adjust to it, it was just one of those immediate impression things, which are occasionally useful.

On the soft lock, yeah I tried to provide a little more info, in case it was the same thing he encountered, since he didn't show it. Also, I doubt he was on the Mac version, as I was. Hopefully that helps track it down.  Oh, I should mention, I believe the option I chose on that encounter was to take out the leaders. I can't verify, since I can't get back to that encounter.  There was a bit of text after about that leading to a fight, and then it stalled.

I'd like an option to decrease the time required to hover over a card before the large version pops up. It feels very slow right now. This MAY be because I am playing on an old Mac mini / potato, but everything else feels so smooth, I don't think that's the case.

It is currently set to 0.75 seconds but will be reduced to 0.5 seconds in the next major update. I am also considering shifting the display of the card away from the pointer.

I'd rather the tooltip never showed up when you are hovering above a card, I would much rather use the right mouse button to bring up the tooltip / big version.   

Really I basically never want the bigger version.  I already know what the cards and abilities do, and I can read them all fine on the smaller version.  Its easier to select and deselect cards when a tooltip isn't in the way.

Is there a reason you cannot use consumables from the map screen?  I understand needing a good camp site to heal but it seems like you should be able to use luxury goods whenever you are not in battle, not just at special camp sites.

A small one (not sure if it has been mentioned before) but I wish there was a way of seeing the refund price of a piece of equipment before selling it. Would make sense if this was only available when selling them though.

All good so far, couple of minor gripes, the card Tribal Striker? Don't quite remember the name, 4/2 Legendary with First Strike that spawns beasts when it kills a target, I killed a target with it but it didn't spawn a token, I'd casted Blind Rage on the target beforehand. Can it only spawn on the same row? Because I may have been up against cover. On the subject of cover, I feel like followers should be able to attack obstacles or cover on their own side of the field if they're behind it. Like, I got a boulder on the first space of a row and didn't have any obstacle destruction and my followers couldn't attack the boulder since they weren't the first units on the row, so the entire row was just kind of useless.

Hi there, really loving the style of the game. Wanted to post a few bits of feedback from my first 10ish hours of play. 

1) Leadership cards don't feel impactful enough. Many of them feel very weak or "filler". 

2) The wound system is interesting but I don't think it plays very well. Constantly having to remove people from my deck after every combat is tedious. Perhaps the point is to only remove rare cards from the deck as the common is mostly chaff. I don't really know I just don't like how it plays and I have been largely ignoring the mechanic after the first few playthroughs so as to not have to sit in the menus forever. 

3) Leveling up does not feel impactful enough. I often see the same 3-5 cards every time I level up and none of them are particularly interesting cards to begin with. I'm not sure if you unlock more card options as you progress or what but  often leveling up just puts overly situational cards into my deck. 

4) Not sure if this is a bug or intended but the card that gives +4/-2 will not kill units with two or less health. It just gives the attack buff. 

So, let me start off by saying the game is great and i'm looking forward to the full release.  I apologize if these have already been suggested but i'll add them here as well just in case

You guys need to find a way to make all the effects of a card visible when it's on the field. It's a staple of any  and all card games on the market. 

Why is it useful:
- users get information faster from the UI
- reduces the frustration of cards doing addition effects that users overlooked due to not hovering over every single card on the field

A screen with discarded cards (dead or otherwise sacrificed):

Why is it useful:
- again, quality of life that is a staple of all card games. As a user, i want know what cards i have left in my deck, especially since there doesn't seem to be an upper limit to stacking followers;


It's an absolute must if you ask me and would significantly improve enjoyment of the game ( at least in my case), since you already have to juggle quite a bit of information at any given time anyway.