Merci beaucoup! I'm so happy to have a recording of the game, even though I can see you ran into some trouble.

I've already received some feedback that the game is too difficult to understand, so adding on your experience too, I think that's what I'll need to focus on soon.

How about for now I explain a bit to help you be able to play through?

From watching your video, I think the most important thing for you to know is how to use the friends Morgan and Alex. You need to have some hope available (for example, from after playing Glimmer of hope), then use can use a friend to do part of the recipe. The hope required for that part of the recipe is the number on that card (e.g. Measure dry costs 1 hope).

Now that you know it will cost you hope to complete the recipe, the next thing is to make your deck stronger, to be able to generate more and more hope. You can do this by acquiring cards like Feeling of hope (gives you 2 hope) in combination with using Let it go on weaker cards (especially Ennui, and also Glimmer of hope).

I think that should be enough to get the game playable for you. Let me know if things still don't make sense. (I'll try to figure out how to make it easier to learn, like you said by rearranging elements or somehow driving the player toward the starting actions.)

Thanks for trying it out, and thanks for the letting me know that you like the clean aesthetic!

P.S. That first crash on startup, that's something I haven't seen before. I wonder if I'll be able to reproduce and fix it...

P.P.S. It's pronounced more like "bakt" than "bak-ed". I've found that the EmmaSaying.com website is pretty handy for this kind of thing. Growing up in Ontario, Canada and taking some French classes in elementary, high school, and university, I can understand a little bit of French but I'm not anywhere close to fluent. Some French words like "ennui" are so superb that they are occasionally used in English and earn their place in English dictionaries.

Oh I see. Yeah, if the number beside one of the friends' names showed the hope required, then it would be more clear that's what you need next.

As for the recipe, you just need to complete the tasks in the batch in order:

1. Measure dry
2. Measure wet
3. Mix together
4. Pour batter
5. ...

The number next to the task is how much hope the task needs. For example, Measure dry needs 1 hope, and Pour batter needs 4 hope.

But I can see how that's not clear based on the description on the cards. I'll need to figure out how to explain that in-game.

Once Morgan and Alex finish baking the cupcakes, they'll sell them at a bake sale to raise awareness for LGBTQ (gay) issues, like bullying and stereotyping. The sale part isn't included in the game yet, and neither is battling against the forces of despair, so right now all it is is baking.