The Royal Writ

This is a pretty fun and silly game until Act 2, when basically every element of the gameplay loop is...acting against you. Not in a tradeoff as you might expect, where a strong effect is balanced against a strong risk; nor is it simply an increased difficulty, like "ascension" runs in many deckbuilders. Most of the cards and mechanics in Act 2 are simply exhausting to play with. The cards are mostly bad; they kill themselves or drain your Morale or inflict status on themselves for negligible effects; many of them perpetually fill your hand with junk cards that aren't very useful most of the time and prevent you from drawing into useful cards. Out of the pool of cards I've unlocked in Act 2 (maybe 12 or so) I actively avoid most of them; there are 3 I want. Some of them I'm not even sure how you're supposed to use them, or why you would want to. It's possible there are strategies I'm missing, but it seems more likely that this is an intentional thematic design that fits the "story" of...

The combat mechanics themselves are interesting, but the balance in this game is awful and full of "gotcha" mechanics. I played two runs before I decided to refund it, so I'll give you my experience: FIRST RUN Still learning the game, but it's not too bad. I notice that the wheel spin location is way too swingy against the player to ever be worth it (Would you like a 50/50 chance to either make 10 gold or permanently lose one of your fighters???), and that my current map seed is full of them. Okay, fine, whatever. Some of the other locations, like the Dentist, are actually interesting, so it isn't all bad. I make it past the first two chapters of the act with relative ease, only to come across a location in the third chapter called "Foreign Envoy". This is one of those "gotcha" moments I was talking about. It asks if you want to make all of your soldiers educated with a bunch of other buffs. It turns out that 'educated' makes all of your fighters have negative values now. Meaning ...

First found out about this game during Steam Next Fest, and while I liked the visual style I was hesitant to try it, because at first glance I thought it'd be a fairly typical card battler and I don't tend to be all that into those. Gave it a try anyway and it quickly became my favourite roguelike. Gameplay leans closer to a Balatro-style deckbuilder while still feeling very original, and the light-hearted humour sprinkled throughout is a perfect match for the generally whimsical vibe of the game's hand-drawn art. Seeing the ways the devs have tweaked things from the demo to full release has been fun too - there's a dentist where you can take a hit to a card's power in return for a random item, but a few cards have fixed power levels, which meant in the demo you could infinitely pluck their teeth to get whatever item you wanted. Come the full release, I tried doing the same thing only to find after a few plucked teeth they were now toothless, changing their abilities (and art) and eve...

Games fun but there seriously needs to be a way to end a run when you know you can't win the battle. It's very annoying having to endlessly hit the attack button until all your cards die off.

This is a very difficult game to evaluate for me, and is absolutely one of those titles where I wish Steam allowed for a more nuanced review system than "I recommend" or "I do not recommend." There are a lot of things here to like. The artstyle, for one, slaps, and is absolutely the best strength of the game. The music is very good, and there's a neat little story to accompany/contextualise your runs. It's not groundbreaking, but it also doesn't need to be. The story is neither obtrusive nor boring, so it's a neat little flavouring. Unfortunately, there are enough rough edges to make the experience wonky. The tutorial doesn't do a great job of teaching you the game's mechanics beyond the bare minimum, and the in-game journal that describes the rules is only two pages long and omits a lot. There's also some ludonarrative dissonance. Narratively, the game makes no justification for why your cards improve in strength as they advance towards the enemy, or why cards *have* to advance even...

Gonna leave a positive review, because I feel like it's another Wildfrost situation: cute and great graphics, innovative and fun gameplay, lots of cool game mechanics, but extremely, deceivingly punishing gameplay loop that's so hard to grasp it feels unfair. So leaving a negative review feels unfair - at least since I haven't devoted enough hours to this game yet. That being said, The Royal Writ is extremely hard to get into. The tooltips' wording isn't all that clear and at times I struggle to understand why I'm losing cards during the battle. The Balatro-style modifier seems to miss the point that in Balatro each card has a blue value that you can multiply by a red one. The Royal Writ cards don't necessarily have a blue value and it creates frustration when you draw all-red cards that ultimately amount to zero. Even giving them a value of 1 would amount to something. The bosses in this game are extra hard to beat. I feel like you need to actively look and plan ahead for a boss fig...

I enjoyed Act 1. Act 2 is not fun. After 4 and half hours I still don't understand what happens if I'm over my deck limit. Not every keyword is defined. I'm not sure how the game defines "ailed" or "standing". I would love clearer guidance on the odds for many food outcomes. A lot of cards use the food card frame to signify that they are single use, but do not trigger "eat food" abilities. These are usually cards that give equipment. Bullets and morale are at best uninteresting and at worst unfun. It is very possible to invest in tactics that do not matter for the upcoming boss fight because not every fight uses all three lanes or all the columns.

Fantastic art, animation, and vibe, great music, and fun!

I only found this game a few days ago on TikTok and went to play the demo instantly. To my surprise it came out two days later. The Royal Writ reminds me of if Inscription and Balatro had a baby and gave it crown. If you liked ether of those games you will LOVE this one.

Don't understand what the negative reviews are complaining about. These game mechanics are clear for anyone who is familiar with the genre; even though I agree the explanations of the systems could be better and colors/symbols could be used more. Still, nothing that a normal player wouldn't understand after playing a run or two. Game is fun in Act 1. & Act 2., there are multiple styles to play and many cards have positively surprised to be way more useful than expected. My tip would be to try out things. If something doesn't work, it's still changeable to some extend later on during the run. Just gather up money as much as possible (on Act. 1) and that'll fix any problem. I'm still working on Act 2., but it seems to be the same but this time collecting Morale in addition to money, as it can be used as currency. If something feels unfair, the game let's you turn it into your advantage. Hoping that the devs will continue to polishing this addicting mouse clicking simulator! EDIT: J...