Played the browser build through the first chamber. Chained three Blood sigils, took the Choir Leech from 26 to 20, and the loop clicked straight away.
What works: the enemy intent line at the bottom is the best thing here. Knowing the next strike before I commit turns a match-3 into an actual decision, and the contextual hint changing from “drag three sigils” to “read the enemy intent, Bone grants Ward” after my first cast is a nice touch. Teaching one idea per turn instead of all at once.
Which is why the Field Manual before the first chamber feels like the wrong shape. It is a full screen of rules covering Vigor, Ward, Focus, four cast types, relics, shrines and curse marks, and I had forgotten most of it by the time I made my first move. Everything in it is good, it is just arriving before I have anything to attach it to. The in-game hints already do the job better. I would cut that screen to three lines and let the rest surface as it becomes relevant, with the manual kept behind the ? button for anyone who wants it.
One bug: on the bottom bar the ENEMY INTENT label, the curse text and the “Strikes for 4” number all overlap each other. On a 1080p desktop window it reads as three lines of text printed on top of one another. Looks like the tooltip and the intent bar share the same space.
Small thing: I played on desktop in a wide window because the page said to use a narrow one. Might be worth just letterboxing it yourself rather than asking the player to resize their browser, since most people will not.
The art direction is doing a lot of work. Good atmosphere.