Hi...I played your game on windows and it was really entertaining.
Awesome game and love the art style and aesthetics. And the music and sfx totally set the perfect vibe. I can see the Slay-the-spire inspirations here but it has its own unique style to stand out. The whole string-and-stitch theme fits amazingly with the gameplay. I especially loved merging cards, creating some awesome combos leading to dynamic playstyles. And traversing through the branching map also complimented the dynamic playstyles.
Now for some "tough love":
- I felt the pacing was a bit slow, and I don't think it's because of the animation speed. I can't quite put my finger on it but I just wished I could progress faster. However, that just might be a me thing!
- The tooltips were helpful, but sometimes since I was not aware of a feature/system I didn't understand the nuances of those cards/items. For example, after the first battle, I had to select a card as a reward and one option was an attack card (don't remember the name) that is Unblockable. But since, enemies didn't block yet, I didn't understand whether it is Unblockable for the player character or for the enemies. Only in the next battle I realized what its use was (but I already selected a different card). There were some more instances like that, however most were easy to understand.
- Getting some healing/recovery cards earlier would be helpful, but that's not issue I want to mention here. In my first run, I strayed away from the Rest stop path, so I didn't get a chance to heal mid-run. And I didn't get to choose any heal cards in the previous battles too. So when I died, I got the Game Over screen with no replay or quit to main menu option. The drawn cards appeared over the Game Over screen which seemed unnecessary. I had to press Esc and then go to main menu. Then when I continued, I started in the same battle without any health recovery so I lost again everytime I retried. So it'd be nice if instead of the same battle you could let the player start on the map from their previous position. And/or on Retry you can also give the player to recover 50% of their health in exchange for coins/cards or something that suits the gameplay. Maybe you can start the player with a revival item which they can also earn mid-run and players can revive every time they die if they have that item in stock. I can understand wanting the player to start a new run when they die but in scenarios like this players never had a chance to get to the good part of the run.
- Lastly, the UI wasn't giving me any feedback. A sprite highlight works sometimes but just didn't give the right FEEL here. And the End Turn button was so bright, it blended completely with its background and I couldn't even see it for a while making me think I got soft-locked. Also, the card ux was cool, but I noticed when I moved the pointer over the corner of a drawn card, it kept toggling endlessly between large and normal size. I worked on a card game a while back and how I handled a similar highlight ux issue was by keeping a threshold on the card and only after the pointer enters the threshold the card will highlight.
Overall, it's a fun game and I'm looking forward to check out what else you're cooking up for it. FYI, I'm on my 4th run now and going strong. Cheers! :)
I am getting, a "missing token" error on itch when I try to reply fully. Thank you very much for your review!
EDIT:
Thank you equally for the kind words AND the tough love. I came to feedback quest for the feedback, so I appreciate everything you've got for me!
Mmm not too sure what to do about pacing. I see you did additional runs so if you get any more of a feel for what feels too slow please let me know! The most awkward section I've noticed is the part where you get the first attack binding, then immediately talk to Gerald and receive a button. It just feel like you are getting rewards without a chance to try them out, so I think I will try to inject one more fight in between there. The drawback is more runway before you get to make any choices, but I feel like that will be just fine. I plan on that map only showing until you first beat the boss, then a full map with choices all the way will take its place.
Was it siphoning, per chance? 
Yeah I can see how that is unclear. Honestly I kinda just lifted that term from magic the gathering but it doesn't really fit my game. I will change it to "All enemies lose 3 health, gain 1 health per enemy drained" if that sounds better? And I am sure that isn't the only place, so definitely let me know if you saw other examples.
Ah, apologies for the cards covering the buttons bug, I am working on fixing that as we speak! The intended behavior is indeed that the run should be over at the game over screen. I plan to update the map to have much better branching paths so that players can more easily opt into healing or into the fight they want. The current map is too linear and it's quite easy to get stuck in a hard spot.
Ah yes! I think I have a task somewhere which very vaguely says "add sfx to everything", I think targeting enemies 100% deserves a sound. Do you think a sound when hovering enemies and their intents would be good or too much? The end turn should look like this, did it look different?
Yeah the card hover is SO fiddly, every time I tweak it I manage to make it worse, but it is on my list to revisit.
I'm glad you are really enjoying it! If you want to keep tabs on future updates you can check my socials or my discord. I have big plans slowly rolling out ^_^ I've made notes of your feedback above, and please let me know anything else you come across. Thank you so much for the review!
Actually...this is how the gameplay environment looks on my system (ss below). Black and white style which I actually found cool.
But I see now from your screenshots that it has colors. I tried with High and Medium graphics and post processing on and off but it still looks black and white. I downloaded the windows pc version today.
About the card, I don't think it was Siphoning. In the tooltip, it said "Unblockable .... something something something" [sorry for my crappy memory]. I'll try some more runs and take a ss of any cards whose details I find confusing.
Just a suggestion, ofc text info is important but sometimes it also helps if you add the exact icons like for damage, heal, etc. that you also use in the gameplay along with the text. However, that totally depends on the visual design and whether it works well with the system or not.
Also, regarding the sfx and showing intents on the enemy hover, it sounds cool but I guess the intent is already seen (a bit hard to understand though, like what is the septagram star thingy??) and if there is no multiple hero characters the enemy can choose from and attack, showing it over them throughout is fine, instead of hiding them and only showing on hover. Sfx and highlight on hover would be nice but I'd suggest a subtle one.
Hope this helps. Thanks.
Oh no! that is most certainly not what it is supposed to look like! Ha ha it looks like luckily my outline post processing made it at least visible. Would you be willing to share your system specs with me? I suspect this is a graphics card issue, but I will need to declare a minimum spec on steam so I would like a reference point to know in case this is an issue for others.
Hmmm, then not sure. If you hit escape during the game you can click the collection button to see all the cards. Let me know if you find it in there. Yes, I definitely need to look into icons, I have heard using color only is bad practice due to accessibility. The only reason I haven't yet are technical knowledge. I need to look into how text boxes work and see what my options are for getting an icon symbol in there. I will add this to my list though, because I feel its helps legibility a ton.
Yeah I will try out a subtle sound and see how I like it. Sorry you got the whiteout version of my game XD
