Alchemica

Hello,

I really like your game. I think it’s playing in a really interesting space with its hand-program-based gameplay. I think this works very smoothly for an initial proof of concept.

Some notes:

1. The game is not explained very well. I don’t expect a full tutorial from you on this build, because that’d be crazy, but your “how to play” section could have helped lubricate the first ten minutes of play where I really wasn’t sure what I was looking at.
2.  Once you get the rules, the game is very easy. I’m sure you’re aware, and that I’m sure it’s to provide greater ease of experimenting with the gameplay. Though, some of this is due to what I would be so bold as to call fundamental balance issues:

a. The “copy a card in hand” potion is broken for its ability to copy Bezoars. This could be balanced by making its cost higher than other potions, but I didn’t see that here. As long as Magical Goat is the wincon, I wonder if balancing that potion is even possible beyond double-digit reagent costs.

b. The “choose a card, destroy it and all cards to the right” potion is objectively better than the “destroy all cards” potion since the former potion can do what the latter potion does and more. Overall, I loved the wide variety of potions and how each has a place. The madnesses felt similarly diverse and interesting to work around.

Finally, not a balance thing, but I encountered what seemed to be a bug where the “choose a card, destroy it and all cards to the right” potion didn’t work at all. None of the cards were indestructible and I don’t believe any of the madness cards or insights interacted with this at all.

Overall, if the worst things I can find about this build are numbers and wording tweaks (that you probably weren’t worried about in favor of getting a working engine out the door), I think you’ve done a very good job of making the core of the game engaging and fun.

As a player of games, I know my ability to provide feedback is more productive in telling you what the problems are rather than how to solve them. That being said, here are some ideas, free of charge:

1.  I think there’s got to be more potential for wincons than just Magical Goat. Maybe some wincons require a certain sequence of reagents and potions in hand, maybe some require paying a Very large cost, so on.
2. Philosopher’s Stone also seems like it could be an adjustable value per-game. If you had the deckbuilding element be a deck you can draw a fixed amount of reagents from any time, along with a card from a madness pile, both of which you have some level of influence over as a player over the course of a “run” (to borrow some roguelike parlance), I think there’s space for something really cool to blossom there. It seems like such a natural fit that I suspect this was your greater plan to start with. That kind of core adjustment seems like it’d be relatively easy to playtest manually in paper, right?

Overall, I think this game has a lot of potential, and I had such fun tinkering with it and thinking about it. Please let me know as further builds of this game are released. Thanks for reaching out.

Hey, I liked your prototype and especially the fact it's already playable, yet still simplistic. I'm also doing a card game and trying to come up with the design ideas for it, but don't have a playable demo.

But I've developed a web-tool for generating cards. Maybe this tool will also help with development of your game.

I would be gratefull if you can take a look and provide any kind of feedback. 

Here's a link https://stonehill-games.itch.io/tcg-cards-generator