There is a LOT to unpack with this game. At first, I couldn't get into it because of how quickly I died and how much it felt like I was just stabbing in the dark for a good card. But once I started uncovering every card's effect and gaining some passives, it was rewarding to see how quickly I could break this game if I literally played my cards right.
I love how the story comes to us mainly in the form of the ambient conversation happening as we're "fighting." I feel like this game treats the theme in a creative way that I'm not sure I've seen yet. And even though this ISN'T a survivors-like game, I feel like this combines deckbuilding with a survivors-like because even though we're preparing ourselves for a fight every round, we're rather passive when it comes to the actual duel; we literally cannot do anything once the pendulum starts, and can only pray our passives and whatever else we had going is enough to see us through.
I also agree that there doesn't need to be a tutorial, either. But maybe a short introduction to explain the core mechanics of the game might not be a BAD idea. It feels like we're just thrown right into our first fight, and with everything unknown to us, those first few battles could be frustrating to new players. I also have no idea what the scale for the enemy's purity could be; one time I had an enemy with 1200 purity but then the next fight had only 200 purity. But THEN the fight after had a whopping 3200 purity, and... I lost that fight soundly. I don't know if there's a way to determine how strong your opponent could be, but it sometimes feels completely randomized.
Overall, this was really fun. It took me a few tries to start learning the cards, but once I did, it was fun to experiment and see what I could come up with to defeat either the enemy or myself.