Part 7 of 7
[*]Stuff right: I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on what you thought the game did right as well (this also helps me a lot for future updates so I can focus on leaning into the strengths and unique things our game offers that you found enjoyable).

Thanks so much for taking time to share feedback and I hope you come back to the game and play again. You'll find there's always something new and I am very sincere about taking player feedback and doing the best I can to improve with each update. We've got a great community on Discord, too, that regularly shares tips/strategies that I'm sure would add to your enjoyment of the game. Feel welcome to join us here: https://discord.gg/d20studios

~Ross

Part 6 of 7
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[*]Walk through allies: I've considered this option, though there's a couple points that hold me back on it. Firstly, like in chess, there's strategy in positioning units that would be lost if you could simply have your rooks fly over your pawns. Second (less game impacting, but challenging) is animating the unit to move past the ally without it looking bad (clipping). Ultimately, the terrain and positioning are meant to put constraints, but this is why the player is always given the first turn. Also note that you can also change the outcome of initial positioning by retreating and entering maps from different tiles.
[*]Knock into water: Glad you enjoyed! It didn't seem right to outright kill units, so the water deals damage, but larger units will return to the board. All of the terrain has specific attributes that can affect gameplay like that which you can learn by right clicking on titles/obstacles.
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Part 5 of 7
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[*]Weapons: To give some context, I designed Abalon for tactical diversity, not power creep (common/uncommon/rare). The aim was for each card in the game to have distinction (strength/weakness) and given the right context, even seemingly weaker cards could overpower stronger ones (ex: a 1/1 squirrel could out-maneuver a dragon). Equipment in Abalon deviates from this standard because of the iterations/evolution the equipment system has seen since the initial launch. Originally, equipment were cast as spells, so weapons had differentiated costs that reflected their differences in power. With equipment now having a lasting duration, that's changed a bit, with gold cost somewhat taking the place of the distinction. Even still, diagonal attack is a more substantial improvement than might seem as you can use this to attack most enemies without triggering their retaliation.
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Part 4 of 7
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[*]Deck Builder: Since the game is designed around a deck of exactly 20 cards, this was the most optimal layout for the most common PC screen (16:9). Since you're generally familiar with cards in your deck, these are mini icons so you can see, at all times, the complete structure of the deck, while being able to read full description on the cards being added. There's a sort feature that helps manage the collection (you can search for specific cards, sort by any order, or filter specific things you are looking for). I'm not sure what specific change I could make to improve here, what were you thinking?
[*]Marshmallows/Merchant Inventory: Some merchants do sell marshmallows, but they currently come in packs of 5 and are more expensive than 25G. You gave me an interesting idea though about adjusting merchant prices based on game difficulty setting, so I'm happy to look into that and more options for the game.
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Part 3 of 7
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[*]Selling Items: I added the ability to sell cards back to merchants in the last update. All you need to do is hit the icons for your deck/discard/satchel respectively while in a shop and you can sell any of these back for gold.
[*]Difficult Elites: Unless noted otherwise in their abilities, the enemy summoners abide by the same deck building and casting restrictions as players do. In novice mode, I also restrict their first turn mana generation to give you an advantage earlier in the fight. Some elites will be naturally stronger against certain types of summoners, so I'd need more info here on the specific fights to help tune this further. Were you aware of the retreat mechanic? Most deckbuilders, you're stuck with the fight, but in Abalon, you have the option to retreat at anytime.
[*]Removing Equipment: There are 50+ different elites in the game and many of them use equipment. Could be that a larger number of these are in biomes you haven't reached yet.
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Part 2 of 7
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[*]Traditional Mode: Every other deck builder on the market has permadeath, so enforcing this with traditional mode seemed appropriate at the time. However, I totally see your point; and more often than not, players are confused when they have permadeath on novice. You've convinced me that changing this would be an improvement, so I will do this in a future update.
[*]4 Map Types: Abalon has 5 different biomes that unlock as you progress, plus the hybrid biome in fast adventure that combines them together. I'm working an expansion that will add another biome to the game as well.
[*]Iron Oath: Converting guardians loyals is a considerable benefit as it increases your max potential party size. However, it comes with the risk of losing them as loyal units are not revived at camp. It's intended to reward players for careful planning and risk taking and is among the most popular cards for hardcore players.
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Wow, thank you so much for taking time to share such detailed feedback! I really appreciate this. I'd love to what I can to improve here, so I'll respond to each of your suggestions with some ideas for potential changes.

Part 1 of 7
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[*]Discard 1, draw 3: That's doable with adding new cards, so I'll take that into consideration. Since the spell itself is discarded on cast, it could even just be "Draw 3 Cards". I think that could be fun for a deck card (maybe in the Arcane school) or even as a consumable satchel card.
[*]30 card decks: As you already noted, the reason for the 20 card limit is connected to the signature mechanic that's intended to provide additional challenge by managing cards and camps as resources in combination with your units' permanent tactical abilities. Adding more cards would heavily affect the balance; but I could see that becoming another playstyle mode in the future.
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OMG not being able to walk through friendly teammates to get around the map is so annoying. A couple times at the start I would do a ranged attack and then my follower next to me would try to walk into a lake or a trap if I wanted it to attack an enemy and it would get hurt and still be in the same place.
The missing a turn mechanic from being knocked in water surprised me. It's kind of cool, potentially useful if on purpose, annoying depending if the enemy has an aoe knockback and is on a bridge map (one elite that I gave up on was). It was also not explained so took me a few turns to figure out.

The game does do some stuff right, but all these little nags (and probably a couple more I forgot) just annoyed me and I only played like 6 hours before uninstalling.

Even on easy mode there were a couple elites that just beat me so bad I finally gave up. I would think on easy mode death would take very bad play to die from, but I was trying my best but they kept summoning 3-5 mana enemies every turn, when I only get 2 mana per turn.
I also found a card that can remove equipment from enemies, but I've only once seen an enemy elite use equipment. Is it more of a pvp card?
Deckbuilding obviously needs work. Even the screen for it when you're at camp, it's just one row you have to scroll through a few pages for to look at all your cards, was this made for a phone's tiny screen?
Having marshmallows available from vendors for like 25g each would be a nice little option, in case we're running low. And maybe letting vendors have bigger inventories.
The weapons are such marginal improvements. The most common ones don't even add damage, just add diagonal attacks or things like that. Which helps, but barely.

Well for one, there's barely any like "discard one card, draw 3" type of cards. If the deck could be 30 cards there'd be room for a few of these while playing, in case you're not getting draws that are useful to the specific fight. You do have a game mode where the deck reshuffles after each fight, but it has permadeath as a downside?!?! I want to play on casual mode. Give us a checkbox list of what options we want on/off during a session.
And there are only 4 map types? Gets repetitive quickly. Maybe those are harder to make than I'm giving you credit for though.
I used an item that was like contract: bind human follower to become loyal, but it changed my permanent guardian to one that now didn't respawn when it died. It was paying like 1000 gold to downgrade it. Why is that even an option?
And why is gold so limited? I have extra equipment I'd sell back to make some gold for some cool thing at a vendor, but I can't sell stuff?