...but i have to accept that i've created a game that sits on the line between being a game that you submit your time to (e.g., microsoft solitaire, minesweeper) and a tactical deckbuilder. suffice to say, i think it's a failing on me as a game developer if you aren't able to play the game as you would either of those two genres
Sorry about that, I didn't play that much of those except for minesweeper. It's mostly the complexity of the action/passive cards, not having the exact understanding of those, and constant realization that I can get completely cucked while drawing cards. The cards each side starts with seem to be random too, so it seemed like it could go in so many ways even risk management won't help. I can combine greedy card picking with one turn ahead prediction, but that's about it.
though, this does make me think that being able to look through the tutorial prompts in a pause menu during the game would be useful for players
Yeah, that's more or less what I thought about, except for some more info than the prompts alone. If I have to figure out the card effects from the very little info the cards have I would need at least some feedback during the game what happens with each action, like a text log.
a better designed game would get around this, but i can't see any way by nature of it being a game based on a deck of cards... though, i'm sure an easier mode as the base game where enemies suffer from LIMIT more would make this less painful for players
I get it, I thought about it and couldn't come up with much. There could be alternative card picking strategies that wouldn't feed into the SP loop, but then the complexity would make any prediction impossible.