Very few games nowadays give me that joy and memories of randomly picking out a third-party Gameboy Advance game I discovered at a Toys-R-Us that was on sale for like $15 in 2004.

Is this game long? No. The devs weren't kidding when they said this game averages out to 5-6 hours.
Does this game have this grand quest where you battle 100+ opponents and "collect-them-all"? Also no. At most, there are around 10+ opponents to fight (and half of them are pretty vanilla to ease players in to learn the rules of the card game) and I'm pretty sure there are less than 50 overall ducky cards to obtain.

But man. Other than the recently released Romeo is a Deadman (which I still haven't played yet. Still waiting on it performing well on Steam Deck before committing to getting it), I don't think there are many games I can describe as "the developers realizing that the medium of a video game is actually a potentially grand venue for showcasing a variety of all the other mediums that encompasses a video game". This game got not only variety in gameplay as a medium, but also the video medium, audio medium, graphics medium, et cetera. It just keeps surprising me in little ways each time with all the "useless and meaningless" stuff it has that give this game a feeling of constant charm.

Now I still love me a "gamey-ass video game" that has me repetitively go through a fun gameplay loop for 1000+ hours that squeezes every last juice of its core gameplay. But nowadays, I am rarely surprised by a game (at least in a charming way for 100% of its runtime).

Do I get the criticisms of the negative Steam reviews saying that the game barely makes full use of its card game mechanic? Or that the game is too short and that there isn't enough to do?

Yes. I do get the criticisms. And I don't ****ing care. This game is ****ing great.

If the card game from Inscryption had a baby with the old Game Boy Pokemon Trading Card Games, and there was actually reason to explore the overworld. Don't know how else to describe it. It's a vibe.

gameplay – A
story – B
sound - B
design – A
detail - B
ui – A
enjoyment - A
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overall - A-
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If you enjoyed games like inscryption, this is the duck version of that game. it was enjoyable and had some fun puzzles and story moments. However it was a bit short (about 8 hrs to do story + side quest first play though). I think their could have been more battles kinda felt like you didnt get many battles till the end of the game at that point you could not modify any more cards. over all if you liked inscryption you will digg this game