(Intended for this to be a review but the review window doesn’t let you paste text into it.)
An impressive start. Clearly still WIP but the foundation is solid. Art is simple, but abundant and consistent. Gameplay is a little grindy but that might just be the current lack of content.
Couple of issues:
Don’t know if it is a bug or an unexplained mechanic but sometimes after a battle the party order gets randomised.
No curios spawned except for in the tutorial, yet you can still waste money buying curio-interacting equipment.
Suggestions:
Prisoner (and other force-class) gear should be easier to unlock, but also easier for enemies to apply. Have it so you only need to complete one development quest to remove, but only need one or maybe two (one for novice / adept, two for veteran+?) pieces to get forced into the class. And possibly have enemies apply equipment passively when they hit a low-durability target. That makes it an ongoing thing to manage rather than a straight ‘this character is now a prisoner for the foreseeable future’.
Have each level of a class provide some permanent benefit rather than just the last. And display what static benefits having a class active provides. This also ties into the above as you can have Prisoners, maids etc have negative permanent effects that characters would slowly accumulate as they are forced to learn the cursed classes.
Cursed items should stay uncursed. If you are going for a ‘powerful but with drawbacks’ approach rather than just having them but trash to get rid off then making them as swappable as other equipment once ‘earned’ will help a lot.
Related to something on the roadmap: Ponies giving more inventory space is extremely powerful. A good chunk of the game will be farming runs and even on novice level it is very rate to finish a run before running out of inventory. Consider either expanding the base inventory so one extra slot isn’t so powerful or scrapping ponies giving more space, unless you want 90% of teams to be three ponies and one healer.