Talespinner

Great card game with an original design. There are still quite a few bugs but nothing game-breaking. I hope they add some content and card balance.

Japanese Slay the Spire. Three playable characters. Each time you win a run on a particular difficultly level for the first time, you unlock additional 'stories' and 'plot twists' which feature new enemies, additional chapters, and stronger debuffs to heighten the difficulty. Each character feels unique in their mechanics and they each have their own progression system, though they all get maxed very quickly at level 4. Visually it looks great, and plays perfectly on the Steam Deck.

There's a lot of potential here. The art style is excellent. Character design is complex, unique, and interesting. There are some novels systems, including pathing and rewards systems, that allow more space for player agency than most/all genre competitors. But Talespinner is slightly undercooked, and needs another polish pass. Most notably, tooltips describing basic card mechanics are missing (I literally don't know what the "static character power" card type is called in this game), leading to interactions that are either unclear or appear to be bugs. For example, a card that was visually classified as an attack was apparently unplayable in an encounter where I had been locked out of playing skill cards. This, to me, speaks to either inconsistencies in visual card identity and underlying data, or sloppy coding that just is not acceptable given the competition in this space. I hope that this game receives continued support, because it genuinely does have unique features that are a real value add. EDIT: I stand by what I said above; missing tooltips are particularly glaring in their absence (another example: Himura cards that apply Mark but don't indicate what Mark is). However…

I like this game, it is beautiful and well designed, but it should not have been released in its current state. It is chock full of bugs and balance issues.

Got to the ice boss, realized it was actually impossible to beat her with my deck that had been stomping the rest of the game, requested a refund. Classic mistake all bad Slay the Spire clones make

This game rips! The characters all play very differently, and the mechanics are fun.