Hi, first of all, thank you for taking your time and providing a solid review.
I want to address the issue with random cards - I have already looked into it, the new idea is to simulate a more classic approach for choosing new cards. In this approach, player would have a deck with some cards to choose from. Instead of always being randomized, the deck reshuffles after reaching the end, and player again can choose cards they know are in the deck already. There are some problem with this approach which requires more designing, for example - what happens to merged cards? Do those go back to deck and player looses their basic elemental cards from the deck? What if deck becomes only some merged cards?
What also could be an improvement to this situation is to let player go back to previous floor - why make them wait at certain point just because they need specific types of cards? They can just go back and get some more points instead.
The last thing that we might consider is to manipulate card randomization on certain levels (easiest solution). For example, levels where puzzles require certain cards should always have this card in the 3 randomized cards - this would be the easiest approach and also suggest player that "look, this certain card is needed here for the puzzle".
Once again, thanks for taking your time for the review, we will look a bit more into the card system after the jam ends