This game's artwork and sound design is absolutely incredible. Looks like you're going for true pixel art look, and I know that's challenging with the font sizing, but it really look gorgeous in this game. Everything from the cards to the menu elements look sleek, but the tooltip design and and the legendary text are my favorite visuals.

I think the tutorial works pretty great, it would be even better if it let you transition to a full game instead of having you start over. The boss levels could stand out a bit more I think. Maybe a little intro before you start the round or something.

The gameplay is fun, but can feel repetitive after you get the hang of it. I think more gameplay choices would help. You can always add more upgrade options, but I think you need a different "dimension" of depth like ways to modify your deck, or some interesting options in the queue .  The card design reminds me a lot of Uno, maybe you could consider adding the reverse card to let you count back upwards (don't sue me M*ttel).

p.s. I saw you mention shorting Common to Comm, to get that looking right, could you go for "Basic" instead? It might look more readable.

This is really fun! Lots of potential here.

My favorite bits:

• Super polished. The little UI touches like the burst FX when you click are 🤌
• Good amount of variety! Things like upgrades helped add some depth of strategy and prevent it from getting stale too quickly
• There’s a ton of gameplay systems at work here considering this is just a jam game! Everything feels pretty well balanced and the combos and upgrades interact nicely.
• Satisfying gamefeel. The SFX and little UI touches really feel impactful (I like the “Play selection/queue” SFX

A few notes:

• It could be fun to be a bit more generous with currency and upgrades. Since there’s so much luck in the game anyway, it’s nice to be rewarded just for surviving a round. I found myself struggling to make it further than ~10 levels - which may be intended - but that also meant I was less willing to take risks on buying expensive upgrades to try new strategies.
• The font is super hard to read. It matches the pixel-y Balatro style nicely, but (for example) the word “Common” on the upgrade panels doesn’t even look like text.
• 29 steps is a LOT for a tutorial. Each panel is short, which is nice, but I start sweating whenever I see “Part 1 of 29” on any game’s tutorial. That said, it moves quickly and generally makes sense!
• The tutorial can get a bit “dev-speak” at times. Like when it explains wildcard combos, it says something about “ 9 8 * 6 is unambiguously 9 8 7 6 so it’s worth X points”. While grammatically correct, it’s usually good to keep tutorial language as simple as possible since the people who need the most help playing are also the ones who may struggle to understand more complex descriptions.
• Scoring was a bit complicated. I never quite wrapped my head around how it works. It’s nice to have it auto-calculated for you on the side panel, but I wasn’t able to plan my moves super well, because I was never quite sure how the scoring was going to shake out once I hit Play. For example: it isn’t made super clear that your score is 1pt for the first card in your queue, +2 for the second card, +3 for the third card, and so on. There’s a line touching on it in the tutorial - but I had to re-read it a couple of times to really understand what it meant.

Hopefully some of this is helpful. Nice game, and I hope you keep working on it!

This looks amazing! The art and polish are top notch.

There is a bit of a learning curve, and the tutorial is a bit texty, but I got the hang of things by my second playthrough. Maybe I would like to have a few more decisions at my disposal than just discarding the pile vs playing the current cards. The upgrades are probably meant to do that, but you have to learn more about them to fully grasp their potential and how each affects the gameplay. Right now, it felt like the main gameplay loop might be less relevant to the outcome than luck and the upgrades you pick, which might discourage new players, as these are out of their control or current knowledge level.

I would like to have more dopamine boosts here and there to keep me going. Maybe some flashy bonus if you play a straight/flush of 3 or 5 cards in addition to the whole sequence/queue. Have more things to keep a lookout for to keep me busy, and rely less on upgrades and luck.

Curious to see how your game evolves. Cheers!

Very well polished game. The tutorial was really needed for me, and I still didn't get everything. Please add the option to go back in the explanations!

I also wondered whether I encountered a bug. Maybe I just didn't understand something, but given that I had an extra that was supposed to give more points for four colors, I was not expecting to get less when adding the fourth color (see screenshots).

The rules for the boss fight were also not very transparent to me.

The audio got on my nerves to be honest. The graphics are very stylish pixel retro charm, but for me a bit too pixelated, maybe. But it's a matter of taste.

In total, a nicely designed and smooth game, congratulations!

I'm admittedly not the best at analyzing this type of game, but I feel like this leans a little too close to being luck-based? The furthest I got was about nine rounds, and considering the score requirements keep increasing but you're limited in how many upgrades and plays you have, it felt like I hit a ceiling at some point where I was reliant on just getting good hands. I was still having fun with it for a little while, and the visuals are great.

Really liked the UI and animations! the tutorial was nice, tho it did feel a little long, maybe you can skip the whole play to round five and jump to the boss instead?

the powerup designs look really cool. my only real complaint was the menu transitions, they felt slow. maybe add an option to remove or speed them up.

Really good game otherwise Great Job!