Before you play there is a mental switch you need to make.

In this game you do not collect a team of cute pets to face the world.

In this game you gather disposable minions you throw at problems often intentionally sacrificing them for a chance at a stronger new minion.

The second you stop thinking about your cute little pets as your companion and see them as the disposable slaves they are the game stops being impossibly hard and the whole game opens up with wide tactical choices every battle.


Without this mental switch well, you get some of the negative reviews here complaining about how hard the game is.

If you use a taming item to heal with instead, that's 99% of the time a mistake. Healing that weak minion could also have been used to tame a stronger minion instead.

This game is great IF you're willing to make that switch in how you see your pets.

They are disposable slaves, use them as such.

The game is great, very unique as this is not how pet games or deck builders are generally done. It's fresh, unique and the art is just gorgeous. Absolutely amazing work.
sound is also very chill.

I'm very mixed on this game.

The art and sound design are fantastic and the combat is fairly fun too. Challenging but rewarding at the same time, each round of combat feels like a puzzle that you try to solve for the best outcome.

That being said the structure of the runs is what irks me to the point that I don't feel like I want to play the game, hence the negative review.

Runs are structured like so: you choose from 2 different combat encounter + reward packages, play the combat then receive the rewards. Then repeat this another 8 or so times. It feels like there's not much breathing room in-between each combat, which take a lot of brain power to push through. So the experience overall ends up feeling draining, even though the core of the game is solid.

I was going to leave it as a recommended because I do like this game a lot, but I think this is more honest. I am just dead mixed on it as an experience. I am probably going to keep playing. But structure of the game and the incredulous difficulty spikes really impact it.

The core gameplay of Nuzlocke-esque creature collection, card game collection, and rogue-like deck building is very fun and super unique. The art is also amazing and finding out it is just one guy is lowkey inspiring. But the game is hell-bent on trying to stop you from engaging with those systems. The gameplay systems, art, and mechanics here are cool, it just isn't there yet.

Tl;dr: Very interesting concept that I want to see massive revisions with in order to truly enjoy it. As it stands, anything above Easy is just frustrating as ♥♥♥♥ to play.

This game is lacking good interconnectivity between encounters. Encounters here are essentially your nodes on a Slay the Spire climb, but you only get fights. You get two choices between fights. These preview what you can get. From creatures to encounter and possibly tame, item rewards, and the rewards if successful. You pick one and immediately fight. Rinse and repeat until you are at the boss. But here's the issue:
- Encounters are both your obsticles and card advantage. You need to tame creatures to build your deck to have a chance.
- Those item rewards aren't really rewards. You usually get 3-4, two of which are food, and the other two are random. You *need* food to even attempt to catch creatures. So, it isn't really advancing your gameplay, just keeping you afloat. The other two are random and can be anywhere from useless, to middling, or a heal.
- The encounters rewards are pretty situational. The best one is the evolution beetle which, imo, is too cool a mechanic to high behind chance.

The issue with the above is the game's biggest flaw is it's most interesting aspect: the taming system. It's my favorite thing in the game but I god the game wants me to hate it.

In order to add a card to your deck, you need to tame the creature. Awesome. A creature has a food preference (meat, fish, or berries), and those foods have a higher chance to catch if they match the preference and opposite foods having less. The more damage they take, the higher the chance overall. The issue? You have zero control over getting food. It is *just* random rewards from encounters. And getting the creatures low enough to guarantee a catch is almost never worth it. Which means you are playing chance with limited resources; which you can *only* get by beating a damn encounters. The very encounters you need to catch these ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ in.

The game desperately needs something in-between encounters to agument these systems. A vendor to buy food, at least. But a place to fuse or evolve creatures/mix their stats up, sacrifice weak ones, something. Hell, make them unlocks to give subsequent runs meaning. But it actually makes my blood boil that the game will lampoon me for "not taming enough creatures" after permantely cucking me on resources. From the jump, you are permanently on the back foot. You sometimes don't even have the items to get one creature, let alone ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ two. If you try to catch early, like 60-80% to avoid losing half your team, you could just whif. Which would be fine if I could procur them somewhere else. The game will even say, "Well, now that the first one catch failed, they are more likely to be tamed!" It's a good thing I only had one fish to try and tame it with. Get it to 100%? Great idea. That requires sitting at 1 HP. The process of getting a creature 100%, I assume as a means of balance, usually has you taking more damage to secure it. That is fine, but it doesn't equalize. Since the creatures you tame don't even join the crew at full HP. They gain a small amount back. Which I can't understand why since you can't use them in that fight anyway. You either need to use a healing item you lucked into, or your food to heal your creatures. Yes. The very same thing you need to tame ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ creatures. All to hit the next encounter where everything is faster, hits harder, and has more HP. I never feel like I am advancing. Easy fixes a lot of things by giving 1HP to all your critters at the end of a fight and more catching items. Normal is such a gigantic disparity

The core here is so good. It just needs more refinement. I hope it goes through some big changes at v.1.5. Would love to change my review.