Hell Outta Here

GG!

I totally agree with @Ham. While the present incarnation would work well as an alternative mode, its pace actively works against its potential. One of the neat things about card game mechanics is that they let the player consider what the right move is from a constrained set of options, choosing the best path out of some mixture of strategy, assessing risk and pushing their luck. All of that takes time.

At the moment, none of the strategic elements have any breathing room, because you can barely play cards fast enough to out-run the lava, let alone consider what the best long-term strategy is beyond which card won't kill me. It also means that the devil cards, particularly the lava rush, become a sort of instadeath, as any loss of momentum kills your run.

If you do stick with the rapid fire version, and perhaps even if you don't, it might worth looking at how a sort of meta game might work, so that players are encouraged to push further to improve the odds of the next run. Things like buying cards for a starting deck, one-off perks, upgrades, etc

One smaller point is that the health mechanics are a bit over-present considering how small a part they play in a run, as there's only one sort of tile that damages the hull without instantly killing you. It could be interesting if the lava tiles were somewhat survivable in very small doses, as that would add another layer of trade-offs to pathing.

I think the lava should rise only when you move- like when you move one or two squares, the lava rises a square, almost like a turn-based game. That way you can plan out your moves better. Otherwise, you're slapping down cards at the speed of light with little to no strategy. You can't even look at the dashboard with all its information because you gotta put down cards so fast. If you did make it turn-based, you could look at the dash before putting down a card and know what you need to know.

There is so, so much potential here, but the lava runnin' at you at godspeed just ruins it. Keep working on improving this, maybe there can be separate modes for different lava behavior.

I can see alot of work was put into this just by looking at it but I couldn't seem to figure out how to play the game on my phone.

Feel like I've missed a tutorial or something.

EDIT:

After restarting the game I realized that I didn't miss a tutorial, seems weird that I can't do anything except tap on the cards, the game looks designed for phones too as the screen aspect lends it straight to it, I must be missing some minor detail on how to play it.

Definitely a well made game! I could tell the developers put a lot of effort into this game! The art is cute and detailed. The mechanics of the game are fun too. This game doesn't look like it was made for a game jam, it looks more like a full game you see on steam's front page!

I was here