Firstly, the things I liked about the game is that it gives a very nostalgic dungeon-crawling vibe, and the messages that appear at the top-right when events happen in the game feels real solid. There are NPCs to talk to, and it feels like a great world that I would love to explore more. You can open the inventory and swap your weapon from deck to hand, it feels like something grand. I was hooked and felt engaged, that is, until I entered the depths of OOM.
I got to Level 16 and stopped. If this is an endless game, there needs to be some information to tell the player that; or, if there’s a boss at level 20, it’s too long for no good reason. While the random generation is great, there’s not much sense to be made of the enemies, or of the weapons. Some of them don’t feel like they belong in this world, it doesn’t fit the theme. For example, the deck is an inventory of weapons, and the weapons have names like Piece of Lint, or Xylohammer or something, but the image of that weapon is a playing card. They should have proper sprites instead. The weapons actually have damage types, and can either be more effective or less effective depending on the type of enemy, but there is not enough information on these sort of things. I don’t even know how much HP and enemy has. On a positive note, respawning the player back in the same level on death is a great design choice.
This feels like an ambitious game that couldn’t be executed well because of the mizjam time limit. If given a lot more care and time, I feel that it could turn into something great. All in all, good effort!