Thank you for the kind words. I'm shocked someone could play this game for more than a hour. I hope it wasn't too frustrating!
You analysis is bang on! I took 3 hours Friday afternoon figuring out the proper deck (it is completely hard-coded) so that it's both impossible to win without cheating and relatively straight forward once you cheat. In fact I computed the total amount of winnable points and used that at a reference. I don't think it's too hard. But I'm convinced now that the game is bad at tutorializing some very important info, most notably:
- Zero beats Nine (which is good to know with the blue effect)
- You can "store" a card by sliding it into your sleeve (hold down Left mouse button and drag the card toward the wrist)
Regarding additional content. Your analysis is also something I considered. It is comforting someone else thinks the same. It's so easy to create additional decks, each one their own interesting puzzle to solve in a unique way. This could really be a deep puzzle game.
Again thank you for taking the time to give feedback. I updated the game description to hopefully help future players.
Spoilers Hints, do not read-on if you want to solve the game by yourself:
- Try storing 1st Hand 0 card and play it against 2nd Hand 9 card.
- 2nd Hand 6 is good to play against 2nd hand 5
- 3rd Hand 0 is extremely powerful if you use the sleeve cheat mechanic correctly
- Play low value cards against Gold if you can't beat them