I return for another Infinidagger adventure!
So before I dive into new thoughts, I just want to note I found a bug. I'm not sure how much of what was going on needs to match, so I'll simply state that I killed the last element, a Rock Elemental, with the rock that the elemental gave me. I had performed no other attacks that turn, and it resulted in nothing responding. XD
I also want to note that most of this was from the same version of the game I played before. Part way through writing, I did realize I forgot to update and opted to play more with said version.
With this said, I can now get into some of my new observations.
So I know part of your intent is that you want players to discover things and be surprised by what happens. This was something you brought up when I noted just being thrown in and being confused as to what to do (which I still think, for the first screen, you should indicate what the player should do). While this is a good idea starting off, when I have multiple visits to different things, have no idea what they do and ultimately just feel like they're having a more negative effect, I'm just going to ignore them. Some examples...
- The Training Dummy. As far as I can observe, I just lose HP here. What is training supposed to do?
- The Pond, the Campfire, and other screens where you're asked to discard a card. Save for one lucky time where I got the cat and somehow got a good reward, these things always result in me losing cards and getting those cards you can't use. What I would suggest is an internal check where, once the player has encountered it, say, three times, it offers knowledge of what to do.
The next thing I wanted to bring up was the amount of monster blood early on. The amount of blood obtained from enemies even a few boards over is way higher despite them often being easier than they were in the start due to just having more cards and options for fighting. I'd like to suggest that in the first few boards, monster blood drops higher.
(Additional off tangent note. At this point, I began playing with the latest version of the game and had another bug such as above, again involving a rock elemental. This time, however, it froze following the enemy's turn).
The last thing I wanted to touch on was something I felt just... didn't make sense. So some enemies are able to apply wound and bleed effects which remain in your deck afterwards. I don't recall if they remove after a fight (and if not, they should). However, I also feel like if you block the damage of the attack entirely, those effects shouldn't be applied. I mean, if an enemy hits you four times but you block it all, how would it make sense that you now have four deep wounds? You blocked them. They didn't actually touch you. :P