itch.io

Review from a long time (18+ years) casual player of multiple TCGs:

The Outfit Abilities weren't really clear. I suggest mentioning them after cards, because I thought at first that the hat which is pictured was a card. Originally I was thinking that you build up Mana to play cards, but actually you play Outfit Abilities with Mana. I suggest adding info that you can only use one Outfit Ability per turn. Clarifying that attack cards need a matching color Energy in the hand to play them, would be good. My first couple of hands had no Energy but I did have Mana and so only the discard pile was highlighted and I was wondering why tossing a card wasn't dealing damage. 

I suggest mentioning in the Tutorial that when you deck out, and the Discard Pile is shuffled back into the Deck on your following turn, that cards you draw on the next turn will be unable to be played that turn and that the 10HP of damage is to a random Outfit piece.

Please add a way to read cards effects in the Discard Pile by hovering your mouse over the card. I also thought Mascot would let me choose which cards, instead of them being random.

The drag and drop system doesn't work well. While I do like the ability to sort your hand, sometimes I would try to drag a card and the mouse would desync from it, so while I could get the cursor over just fine, the card wouldn't be able to make it all the way for me to drop it. (Most noticeable when attacking the Hat with a card from the right side of my hand, but could happen anywhere.) A click to select and click where to attack afterward (or clicking the discard pile after clicking a card to discard it,), or double click to play a card would be really nice. Most cards only target one specific piece of clothing, a random piece, or all pieces, or is a non-targeting ability card, and so double clicking should just play those cards. The only time a selection confirmation should be needed by the player is if a card has a choice on which piece of clothing you damage.

Fun idea for a game, and the only thing I would add to it are Counter cards, which would prevent the opponent from playing a card if your Counter card meets the condition. These cards could either require their own energy like most other cards, or have a special Cost instead. Adding Counter cards, would give the game more direct interaction with the opponent instead of the game just being the first one to deal damage the fastest wins. 

The characters and their expressions are cute. You clearly like your OCs. The VAs also did a really good job. The music is good too.

I ran into a bug in the demo where on the hardest difficulty the AI either wasn't ending it's turn or I was unable to start mine. Happened on Stella first then on Arc and after that clicking end match gave a JavaScript error followed by the game becoming unresponsive.

By "autoplay" I meant showing the beat meter on screen automatically hitting the notes. That would allow for a "hands free" experience allowing you do to some other things with your hands to the beat displayed on screen. You may or may not be familiar with the game "Cock Hero" or "Fap Hero" for the animated version. If you aren't familiar, I highly suggest looking it up. One video should give you the idea of what I am talking about. Most have the rules listed at the beginning of the video. It's a pretty simple concept. With such an autoplay feature, scoring would have to be disabled when it is in use so that players can't use it to cheat.

I created an itch.io account just to tell you how I much enjoyed this game. I play Expert on Guitar Hero and SS Ruth still took me several tries, even with Glass. Just had to "get good" and I did! Got the full game SS.

I really like how you can create some pretty hard challenges for yourself depending on what cards you take in Endurance Mode. Doom+only Rituals is pretty interesting. So is Double+Fission and stacking Tempo can get crazy. Ghost+Fission or Mines is just about impossible though. The music is good as well.

The card system and Endurance Mode adds replayability. The fast travel and save code system is a nice quality of life feature. I'm sure some players would like a save file system that writes to the game (or cookies for the browser version) but this save file system works for me as I want to play in browser and I block cookies.

The platforming and the Haunted Hall and Boba minigames were a welcome surprise. Haunted Hall could probably be a game in itself with more levels and other additions. There is a typo in Tonn's dialogue "Try Hauted Hall"

Some things I would like to see in the game, (maybe after full game SS or Endurance modes beaten) an autoplay mode (to enjoy the art to the beat, like Cock Hero. The art is really good by the way,) also the ability to select which cards can show up, and/or a preselect menu to manually select what power-ups happen at what point in the song so the player doesn't need to keep re-rolling. (For before post-game, the reroll mechanic is good though.) That one would have to be after full game SS for game balancing purposes. I also would love to try an all Ritual challenge with being able to manually limit the randomized effects. (Mainly looking for an all negative effects challenge.) I noticed that cards only appear once you beat the song the cards first show up from, is Ritual limited in same way to cards that have been unlocked? I'm also hoping we would get some scenes with the Reaper and woman transmogs with the rest of the characters.

Another suggestion: I found the Yoni's missing parts section confusing and looked literally everywhere. (I'm not even exaggerating. I checked everything in the overworld, inside every tent, every garbage can, every cooler, every chair, and even everywhere inside Haunted Hall and the platforming section.) Now that I know where the parts actually were, it turns out I had them early on. I just never went back to Yoni because I didn't think I had them yet. I recommend having a message in the location where the parts actually are. Something like, "you find some unusual parts." Maybe also show them in an inventory and/or if you picked them up before Yoni asks you, you could respond with something and just hand them to her.

This is one of the most fun rhythm games I've played. Almost as good as some of the major titles out there. Who did the artwork and where can I find more? Are all of the characters created by the same person? Do they have other things out of game? Is there somewhere to go for more comics? A credits section on the main menu answering these questions and whoever did the music (edit: Wishful Simping, I just went to your Youtube Channel, which I only knew about from this comments section, you should also add that in the credits.) would be good.