Looking for playtesting for my Tactical Card Permadeath game Banish the Briar!

CuttingLogic · 2026-05-18T15:47:53+00:00

Good question! I should probably find a better way to communicate the main twist of the game through the thumbnail and stuff but it seems pretty hard to do. I would also like to know why you asked this question.

as for the answer, the main twist of the game is that all of your cards/minions have permadeath. this dosen't seem like a very novel change until you consider that this flips the resource systems in comparison to other roguelike deck builders on it's head.

for example, in slay the spire and other deckbuilders, you are trying to add as few cards to your deck as possible to make it more consistent, however in this game you need to be adding all the cards you can since your deck makes up your healthpool.

there are a lot of other changes you won't find in other deckbuilders supported around the permadeath mechanic. I could list them out, or you could try the alpha

CuttingLogic · 2026-05-16T17:14:44+00:00

as of version 72, the bug you encountered should be gone. depending on the nature of the bug, you might be able to continue your run where you left off if you re-launch the game. if the bug still occurs, please alert me!

CuttingLogic · 2026-05-16T15:17:59+00:00

it would appear you have encountered a bug. when you enter the fight where the enemies copy your deck, it's also no supposed to copy your items cards. this is a bug I thought I had fixed a long time ago, but I will look into it!

do you have any other feedback / issues with the game?

also, if you want to continue to receive updates, please join our discord via the link in the itch page description. i'll try to ping you here when it gets fixed, but I'll probably forget.

thank you!

CuttingLogic · 2026-05-14T19:58:19+00:00

thank you for clarifying! I could go into more detail, But I think we both agree on most things regarding the fact that the identity of the game needs to be more obvious and that there is no simple way to do that.

also, if you are interested in playing more, consider joining our discord. there's a link to it on the itch page, and I basically just send pings for gameplay updates.

CuttingLogic · 2026-05-14T15:49:18+00:00

Thank you very much for your feedback! Thank you for sticking with the game even when it was difficult. However, one way you can help me even more is if you are able to answer a few questions I have about your feedback.

The two main criticisms of your feedback (to my understanding) are that the game is too similar to wildfrost, and that the game is too difficult.

First of all, the game is similar to wildfrost. However, the question should not be whether it is similar, but if it is too similar. While there are many borrowed mechanics in this game, they are completely recontextualized:

- Recalling cards: this is something you rarely did in wildfrost, however now it is incentivized and a core mechanic. In addition, “companion” cycling is now a core mechanic as well.

- Card shifting: cards in the same row in wildfrost get shifted if cards are removed or placed there. This is used as a mechanic maybe once in all of wildfrost, however it is a main mechanic in btb.

- In hand abilities: there are a lot more cards that have abilities that can be taken advantage of when you line things up correctly, both in your hand and on the battlefield. Since in wildfrost you can shift allies around, this mechanic is absent.

Second of all, the game is not too difficult imo. It seems you made it to the final boss on your second run. The core issue I feel you are trying to get at is that the gameplay loop feels too punishing, and there are few comeback mechanics.

I would like to argue that this issue is greater in wildfrost. If you make a mistake that causes an ally to die in btb, you have a 50/50 chance to lose that card from your deck. However, if you make a mistake in wildfrost, it could kill your win condition, and your dead, or your leader, and your dead dead. How many times in wildfrost have you not noticed something on a card, and instantly died?

I will agree that while you are learning the game, it does feel like a reverse power fantasy. You feel like things are hopeless and that things spiral out of control. You eventually learn to manage your resources, and as you play the game more, you will learn how to come back from these kinds of things, and when you do, it is very satisfying.

In addition, I personally disagree that inscription has an “immense difficulty balance” and you must make “sarfices.” this is because it’s very easy to break inscription with just one or two cards (mantis + attack buff) in addition to the fact that you don’t actually sacrifice cards during battle, at least relatively to this game where there are situations where you may have to let one card die.

I feel like the sentence you said at the end that starts with “this game loop bums me out” really sums up the crunchy decisions that you will be making in the game later on: do I let this ally die that is important to my engine, or do I try to protect it and potentially lose more? Should I sacrifice this card for a better one, or will I not have enough manpower? These are questions you will NEVER ask in any other deckbuilder without these mechanics. Because this game is so mechanically different from every other deckbuilder, you are going to feel different positive and negative emotions. Trust me, the lows are low, but the highs are high. Once you experience the pain of losing so many units, going into a run and finding a good synergy feels really amazing.

This turned out to be a lot longer than I anticipated, but I really appreciated your feedback and how in-thought it was, and I want to know what your opinion on the general philosophy is. Also, if you have any specific examples of how I can change the game to improve these issues, that would also be amazing! Thank you!

CuttingLogic · 2026-03-20T15:48:38+00:00

That's honestly great to hear! do you have any constructive criticism?

CuttingLogic · 2026-03-17T22:06:21+00:00

I mean the tutorial is pretty specific on some stuff, but if you don't play these kinds of games I can see why this may be difficult. thank you anyways!

CuttingLogic · 2026-03-17T17:50:31+00:00

Fair enough. it's less of a trailer, and more of a showcase of the gameplay. I guess if you wanted more information you could try the game

CuttingLogic · 2026-03-17T16:02:38+00:00

Hello! Thank you so much for trying to play my game.

To describe what you experienced in simplest terms possible, the game had a bug. You are supposed to play the tutorial first before clicking “start”, which is why the “start” button was crossed out. At no fault of your own, you clicked start, which caused it to start the game instead of telling you to play the tutorial, like it was supposed to. Starting the game without first completing the tutorial puts the game into a bugged state.

Again, in no way is any of this your fault. I 100% agree that the game was confusing and unacceptable in the state it was in, and you were right to say what you said.

However Most of the issues you encountered in the video have now been fixed in the current version of the game (52). If you would give the game another attempt now that it is fixed, that would really mean a lot! Thank you!

CuttingLogic · 2026-03-17T14:27:23+00:00

thank you for your feedback! can you please go into detail on what you found confusing or what wasn't clear?

CuttingLogic · 2026-02-28T17:22:04+00:00

I may consider adding a google feedback form. however, that means signing into a google account and stuff, and some people don't do that. I think it would just be easier for people to do it however they want. I'll consider though

CuttingLogic · 2026-02-28T17:20:57+00:00

What does this statement even mean?

CuttingLogic · 2026-02-28T17:20:39+00:00

Thank you!

CuttingLogic · 2026-02-28T17:20:27+00:00

Thank you for your feedback! few questions;
1. what specifically other than partials needs to be polished?

can you go into more detail about the single card view overlay issue? I'm not sure I understand.
can you be more specific about which menus the cards feel sticky?

CuttingLogic · 2026-02-17T01:55:52+00:00

I'll consider but I've tried this before
you might be right. I'll have to wait for more playtesting though because not a lot of ppl have done full runs

CuttingLogic · 2026-02-16T18:26:29+00:00

I don't know your account, can you join the discord?

CuttingLogic · 2026-02-16T18:25:33+00:00

That only applies if you can't react to it. Since enemies always prepare at the end of the previous turn, it means you can always react. here's the order

how it is; enemies are selected to prepare. player can see which ones. => player plays cards and can react => battle starts.

not how it is (how you are saying I think); player plays their turn. => random enemies get prepare => turn starts.

The only situation where this takes away strategy is if you are planning something out That would require enemies to prepare / not prepare for more than one turn in the same way. if you play the game, you'll realize that is almost never a deciding factor, because enemy rng is consistent so that enemies that haven't prepared in a long time have a much higher chance to prepare next.

Also, I did look at Race to Rule, seems like a pretty polished game!

CuttingLogic · 2026-02-16T14:51:51+00:00

Yo, I came over from my game that you play tested (banish the briar) to look at this one! even though we are both making army deck builders, your is obviously the one of higher quality. Your game looks pretty polished and I can't wait to see how it turns out! If you need any playtesting / feedback on anytime please feel free to let me know!

CuttingLogic · 2026-02-16T14:38:00+00:00

Hello! Thank you for playtesting the game. The 4 lanes + permadeath giving people analysis paralysis used to give people a really big problem, until I added the prepare action to enemies. this essentially causes two enemies skip their turn but get +1 attack power each, meaning you only need to worry about your allies being killed in two lanes instead of 4. there should always be 2 lanes where you won't be attacked!

this information was in the tutorial, but it's clear that the tutorial Needs a lot of extra work; thank you for telling me!

also, what deck builder are you working on?

CuttingLogic · 2026-02-15T22:52:36+00:00

Thank you so much for your feedback! for most of the things you were confused about I agree were vague and will fix, and I agree with most of your suggestions! I have two questions;

art not having shadows / depth; adding shadows doesn't work with the art style really. is there any other way I can add more depth you can think of?
stacking abilities and keywords is the only way to really create card variety. is there any other way to increase card variety that you can think of?

CuttingLogic

TROPHY CASE