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(2 edits) (+1)

Here is my more serious review:

For context I'm a quite good slay the spire player, the only reason I didn't grind until ascension 20 is because I got bored after a while.

🧚‍♀️What I liked about this game:
-Everything

🧚‍♀️What this game would benefit from:
-More stages and more characters, but I'm pretty sure you are already working on them
-Didn't see any fairy in the game, but I may have missed them
-The possibility to visualise which artefact/card you are offered without being forced to choose directly (like if I'm proposed the toxic egg, it would be nice to know if I have any nice skill in my card choice)
-A way to see what the upgrade of a card looks like (for example, seeing the upgrade of a card like poison arrow make it suddenly quite more interesting to pick).
-A reminder at the camp that you have a mystery essence in your deck and you may want to rest rather than upgrade.

🧚‍♀️Bugs:
-Stable orbit+ either doesn't work properly or doesn't explain well its effects, I only received radiance from it when I actually redirected an attack.

🧚‍♀️Random thought (neither positive nor negative):
-I wish you good luck to balance all of this. I got the tangle yarn on my second run, and let me tell you it is even more ridiculous than the pyramid cube of slay the spire. A lot of gems/relics scream that they want to break the game.
-The huntress' relic seems by far the best, to not say the only sensible choice. You are at the mercy of card draw in this game, even more than in slay the spire due to having 3 different colours of mana/cards. Having a good starting turn is essential. The dwarf's starting relic may be fun for a greedy run. The tactician relic is laughingly bad. No battle is ever going to last 7 turns unless it is a boss battle, and an upgrade at that point of the fight isn't going to change much. I don't know what to think of the priestess' relic, multi-enemies encounters aren't that common.
-The game is already easy for me despite having upgraded no heroes. I hope there will be enough challenge justifying those upgrades.

Super helpful, and in-depth feedback. Really appreciate your perspective on it, you clearly know the genre well - especially given you crushed your first run!

If only you'd rested at the campsite and transformed Mystery Essence, it becomes a fairy wisp summon ;)

You're totally right, balance is going to be a huge undertaking. We're gonna be relying heavily on data, and there's thankfully a ton of dials to turn to balance stuff, but it's likely always gonna have the potential to get wacky given the number of possible interactions and hero/card/gem combinations.

Regarding difficulty, it's a tough one to dial in for the demo, given it's only the first act, and balance is most definitely a work in progress. We hope to implement something akin to the Ascension system to provide difficulty progression in the end, albeit with a twist to serve the party based gameplay. For the time being, empowering only provides a modest increase to power, and mostly serves to unlock new cards and therefore playstyles for heroes.

Thanks again, a lot of great insights, glad you had fun!