Did the creator of this game mean for it to be as brutally difficult as it is? For most of the later levels especially it was pretty frustrating to have to go second on top of starting with a huge stone handicap, especially when some of the later cards (37, 43, 47, 67, and 89 all come to mind) actively make it much better to go first! Oh, and on top of that, the opponent generally has anywhere from 10ish more energy than you to *nearly twice as much*.
Thanks for the feedback. Balancing late levels was tough because there are so many different strategies players might be using, and also some players will unlock more lab rooms than others.
Were you able to do the lab puzzles? They give access to some powerful cards. I will try to push an update soon that makes those puzzle less cryptic.
At least when playing Challenge difficulty, my intent was for the player to:
Should I make any of these assumptions more clear in the game?
I did all the lab puzzles, yeah. I'll go back some time and let you know which of them I found most useful - most notably the dial-a-stones, obviously. I did also explicitly counter the weirder fights, and it wasn't enough to win - if you want I can capture some video of my play? I don't *think* I'm doing anything very wrong... As for skipping the non-boss levels, it really seems like every level should be reasonably beatable with however much energy you have when you first encounter them! I did however understand that I could skip them and come back to them if I chose and indeed I did just that; more generally I don't think making those assumptions more clear in game is going to be necessary/enough, because the overall level of the fights is *almost uniformly so hard* (and going second *so big of a disadvantage*) as to make none of that matter quite as much.
It might be nice to have more than one deck slot, by the way. That way you don't have to memorize your deck when you've changed it to counter those specific weird fights and then want to put it back (and even if you *do* remember it perfectly, it takes *how many* individual clicks in the late game?)
Ah, maybe I should tone down the difficulty then, if every level seemed tough even with every lab stone. Perhaps most players were winning with a specific strategy that I recently nerfed. I'll make a few tweaks to most levels in the next few days.
Also, great idea about deck slots, I'll plan on adding some shortly. Shouldn't be too tricky to do. I think I'll have it unlock after Level 7 so players aren't overwhelmed too fast.
