I watched Markiplier’s gameplay of this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxW84qnvZEc
The art style is really cool. The cards are dark and inky, minimal, and illustrative. The colors of the board/environment changing is lit. Background ambience was wonderful and calming.
The game’s manipulation of our inherent sense of distrust is pretty cool. The whole environment is sus, so you automatically think things are meant to deceive or screw you over. When you’re first introduced to some mechanic, the storyline can cause you to make disadvantageous choices due to this distrust. Like the survivors around the fire, the interaction makes you think your animal will get devoured and leads you to choose the most worthless card you wouldn’t mind letting go of, which ends up receiving a buff. The sacrifice too, because we don’t know what it does, we choose a card to let go of that ends up buffing some other card.
I love that the cards talk to you and have distinct personalities. The Stoat will drop you hints as you play more of the game, and you can find more things by exploring the physical house. The stinkbug mentions the flash, so they too died to the narrator’s game before. Which begs the question if they were human players or talking animals before becoming the cards, since your card has the image of a human. I’m curious what happens if the player were to die again. The lore is captivating, but I think a pvp version of this (especially a web version) would be sick.
Card games like this require a lot of keeping track of all the properties of all the cards you have and the opponent have as well as rules of the game and what types of cards are useful against what type. This had multiple stats to keep track of, blood, bones, buffs, damage vs health of each card, turns, and the scale and opponent’s cards and stats. The ability to give another card the buffs of another sacrificed card allows for diverse gameplay opportunities. I think what you pick says a lot about your play style/personality. Anyways the cat is highkey fire. I thought it’d be a 9 lives type of thing but it’s an immortal cat. The goal is to inflict more damage which can make you focus on damage cards and overlook resource cards. The pack mule is also fire. As you progress, it becomes lowkey overwhelming how many different types of cards you have.
I’ve been playing a lot of Genshin lately so this really reminded me of the mini-games they have, the card-based ones. It’s too much reading and learning rules for me. However, the games in Genshin kind of have balance issues. You’re so overpowered that it feels like you cannot lose even if you just pick at random and don’t even read the rules. In the current event, you play each level once and earn all stars and all rewards. In this game, the cards you can get can be very limited and you have to carefully consider your plans to avoid losing.
There are so many ways to play this game. Do I want to try every card? Do I want to stick with a strategy that works? Do I go with vibes? Markiplier’s playstyle is totally different from mine. I’m an overthinker. I have a habit of agonizing over what the best choice is and trying to plan out moves even though they don’t quite work out all the time because I will always forget some detail. It’s the competitive, perfectionist anxiety even when I think the game should be better enjoyed without much thought. It’s the same when I tried chess where I’d play some move, anticipate their moves, and plan subsequent follow-ups, but I always miss some detail and lose an important piece or they would play some piece I didn’t expect. This game would probably have given me a headache if I were to play it now. I don’t have enough RAM in my head to adequately track everything but I’m anxious and compelled to try. Markiplier on the other hand has a carefree playstyle and picks based on funny/what would this do rather than competitive advantage. He goes with vibes, constantly screws up and immediately regrets his choices and then moves on. Aside from that, I also play more defensively, want to build a whole deck (have options), and think I would go for squirrels more often than Markiplier who keeps choosing specialty cards without the squirrels for them and plays for survival (barely enough to get by). Interesting to watch but as a player I would get frustrated at the mistakes.