The First Million

It seems really well designed and implemented, unique even. On the surface, there appears to be a lot of different ways you can assemble your engine/tableau to get to the goal. It took me approx 2 hours to get my first successful run on the easiest difficulty, and I felt really satisfied in how I pieced it together after a few runs of tweaking the idea I had (I don't want to spoil how I did it but it did seem OP). I think others will enjoy digging into this and figuring out different engines to see how well designed and open the game really is, I am not good at analysing these things myself. On my next run to 3 million I'll try a different idea to see if I can make it effective. There's a lot of cool cards that I find interesting that I wasn't able to solve and I look forward to trying to build around them/breaking them. I feel like there's quite a bit of depth to explore and the game incentivises you to try it by taxing (with time) cards that won you the previous run, which is a cool idea (yet to see if it's frustrating)

I also think I've done a good job at filtering out the trap cards. I still need to interact with buying more cards that could change how I put the puzzle together and I haven't explored past the starter upgrades - this is where the meta/prestige mechanics come in. Honestly I have not really payed much attention to this (yet) but going for higher numbers will no doubt need a bit of a grind to unlock tools to get you there (a good thing for incremental enthusiasts!) I'm imagining that I'll need to have runs where I simply maximise silver production for as long as I can before inevitably failing the money goal.

But in short, I'm impressed with this. I didn't feel screwed over by RNG, only by my own bad choices which I think is good game design. The UI is clean and I think there's a huge amount of potential to develop the ideas presented here for future iterations - it does feel unique in the seamless marriage of different ideas. I would definitely recommend this game to people who are into active-incremental and engine building games (computer or board.) I would not say it's like other roguelike deckbuilders and has more in common with Zachtronic-type puzzle games than it does, say, Slay the Spire or Balatro. Assembling cool engines does scratch the same itch as putting together a nice engine in Opus Magnum or even putting the right cards down to do get your Magic The Gathering deck working smoothly.

Good stuff, and the price makes it certainly worth a chance if what you see, or what I wrote, intrigues you. If the depth I'm seeing in the early stages is there then it honestly seems underpriced! Well done dev, I enjoyed your game for 2 hours already and no doubt will get a few more in.

Kinda sucks. To random. and tend to get more junk cards than any other card. Your first choice in the game determines if you will ever pass $2m... getting to $1m expect to restart atleast 10 times. The game itself tells you that it "will" become easier. I call BS. Then the lotto randomness at 1% ok fair. But the time for cycle being insanely high means that you have better odds with other cards. having a full board of Lotto cards won't help you to win. THEN you get to where "IF" you win a run - the cards you used to win the run with gets debuffed - fair enough 1 run ok , 2 runs ,ok , 5 runs, getting frustrated, all runs till you win again. Again calling BS. There is way to many variables and the matter of fact is you choice your own variables based on randomness THAT will inevitably cause you to do 100's of runs over without progressing. Then comes the "silver and gold coins". THESE add an additional randomness on to the INSANELY random features already impleminted. Choice to get a choice between 3 random cards. All being trash cards or save up 2 - 3 rounds worth of silver to get the SMALLEST of possible boosts to your run. PS. save your gold till you get 3 ( goodluck with that because it's easier said than done ) I have never raged on a game but damn man - it feels like this game was made by Satan himself. And no, I'm not trash at games and no I did not just do 2 runs and feel like commenting like I did. GL to the next person trying their b.ts off to win.

It's a great ''active'' idler. In fact, this is the kind of game where incremental is a better descriptor. Try the demo, then I'm pretty sure you'll buy the full game.