Thanks for the feedback!
Yeah in hindsight, I definitely should have reduced the number of stats going on. The idea was that you're getting 'attacked' each turn, and you need to block the attacks by playing Peaceful cards, otherwise you'll gain the black cards that harm your health. What I messed up is that of course there's nothing that forces you to play any cards per turn, so you can move around, gaining loads of bad cards, but there's no reason to play any cards such that you'll ever see them! This is definitely something I'd like to fix in a new version of the game.