This one was longer than I expected, though still pretty short in the grand scheme of things.
There haven't been a lot of visual novels in this jam, so I was pretty interested in trying this one.
The story was just kind of there. It's enough to push things along and make me want to keep playing, but otherwise is kind of forgettable. I don't know how much the focus was meant to be on the story, though.
I can see the art being divisive. It reminds me of the Flash games of yesteryear, and I personally liked it. The whole game kind of reminds me of those little games, in a way. It has the same kind of story and the same kind of feel.
So points for being (unintentionally?) a nostalgia trip.
The gameplay was surprisingly good. Battles were tense and the little effects made them pretty satisfying. It's pretty barebones when you take a step back, but it works well enough and the game is short enough that the battles are still interesting by the end.
If there's one complaint it's that battles are heavily RNG-dependent. It's possible to really get screwed by the deck, and you can end up in seemingly unwinnable situations or rounds can get very drawn out by stalemates. I had long runs where I'd end up with no replenish cards, or nothing but defense cards, or one-point attack cards.
I'm not sure what the best solution would be for this. Fewer card types, maybe even just one of each? Maybe a bigger hand? Some of the other commenters will probably have better suggestions.
It's impressive that this is done in Ren'Py, but like most Ren'Py combat systems it does feel a bit janky. Having to confirm after selecting a card just feels like an unnecessary step, and having to use the tiny back button at the bottom to cancel was super awkward. I also found the UI hard to read on my screen because it was quite small.
I thought the second battle against the boss was going to be a rehash of the previous fight, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that it wasn't, and seeing the shuffle-loses-hp mechanic come into play in the narrative was a neat meta touch.