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For blue, I also did not try it a lot and did not go for it really, which contributed to not getting a pure blue win or substantially mixed blue win. The removal of rewards of symbols for common enemies made the game harder. For blue, after you wrote this reply, I tried specifically to unlock the Spade symbol, and only succeeded after some time. Most everything else was unlocked before I tried unlocking the Spade symbol. I may have wrongly assumed that one strategy would not work, which I may have employed in a previous demo day some of the time, namely to get to a point where your defenses are strong, your money making is strong, and then just go to weak enemies and have the battles last for a long time and get lots of money. It is not easy, but you can actually get to a point where you can grind the bouncers for money without taking any damage in return. At that point in time, you have probably already almost guaranteed a win, of course, but I feel like the bouncers should get more powerful every time you defeat them in a room, even if they only get a bit more powerful each time you defeat them. But this is mainly yellow decks that may have some blue mixed in.

I did not succeed in finding a good combination of blue using the Spade up and running, though I have only played a smidgen after unlocking the Spade symbol. I can see it being powerful, since it does not consume Block, and there are blue symbols that either builds up a lot of Block or persists block between rounds. And the Ace of Spades symbol only get stronger over time, even when facing the final boss.

Bones can be powerful if you get a very large amount of Power, but that is difficult to get in the first room, and defeating enemies effectively is helpful in getting money in the first room to try to clap together a viable game-winning deck, or at least one that can defeat the boss of the first room and then try to clap together something good in the second room. And even if you have a mediocre amount of Power, bones may not be worth it. For the early game, if you have 3 matching Bones, you get 2x2 + 1x2 + 0x2 = 6 damage. Not bad, but not amazing either. If you compare it with the Fist symbol, you get 3 + 3 + 3 = 9 damage. Now, if you have both Bones and Fist, and you match 3 Bones and then 3 Fist, you get 6 damage total. Making the Bones worse than useless, apart from matching. Each bone can potentially make every subsequent hit 1 worse. So if you have Bones first and then X hits from subsequent symbols, you maybe deal damage for (2 + Power)*2 - X. If Power is at 2 and X is at 10, you potentially lose out on 2 damage compared to if you did not have Bones. And you can have multiple Bones match early. On the other hand, if you have huge Power, like 15, the multiple hits of Bones are worth it. But that is often in the late game and when you likely have a powerful build already, not in the early or mid game.

But I do not mind Bones being weak or a drawback early, it is a part of the challenge to figure out whether and how to use Bones. Just please enable rerolling at the start or some other way of avoiding or dealing with Bones.

The map generation for some levels can be very punishing, with long vertical walls ending in dead ends or mini-boss enemies before the passage, and other issues with the map generation.

Avocados having a brown core: My brother in Christ, what in the world are you saying? The RGB code for the brown core of an avocado symbol is 0Xa96521, the RGB code for the core red color of a Chili item is 0Xd74646. These values are not far from each other, in particular when looking at them at a glance. Almost all other symbols are great at avoiding ambiguity in colors. [Imagine an image of a crying, sad and cute cat here]. Please do at least tweak the color to reduce the risk of confusion and ambiguity, thank you.

I personally almost never tried timing the reel, and I would not have cared about colors there if I was color blind, except for the sake of learning and understanding the game and what is going on. But I do care about the color of the symbols when I am picking and selecting them, and which color(s) a symbol is when picking or buying is in my playtester-role-opinion (which is basically worthless, I have no stake in the game, always be careful with the opinions of others) significantly more important than matching them on the reels. Though being able to see which color(s) a symbol has, is helpful for learning the game at the start, and people have already had problems with understanding the game. Maybe let the player have an icon in the hover UI that shows the color(s) of a symbol, maybe right below the “SYMBOL” text in the top-right corner, both in the shop, when picking in the room, and when viewing the symbols in the UI? You could honestly get inspired by the color icons from Magic: The Gathering. To me, as long as the color-blind player can learn which colors a symbol has, the silhouette of the symbol should help, many of the symbols in the game has more or less mutually-distinct silhouettes. But if you really want color-blind players to see it, maybe add small tiny icons in some corner of each symbol on the reel, each of them having an easy to differentiate silhouette? It would require testing either way.

There are many fun and sometimes surprising combinations. Like the Star symbol with the Brand New Suit item.

A tutorial is a good idea, even a brief one should help. I would personally not care about getting the timing right with the reel spinning, it is perfectly possible to play without timing, and some people may want to play the game without any timing or reflexes at all, like a pure turn-based game. I did not personally pin the game as having timing be important, to me it is all just deck building, predicting and picking fights, exploring strategically, and having the right strategy, and learning the game mechanics and discovering funny and interesting combinations, and stuff.

Maybe the right kind of green deck could also grind the bouncers, in order to get an arbitrarily high maximum health. But that kind of deck might be viable for winning the final boss either way.