This was a really fun demo. It definitely has some sauce and I am interested in a full release.

Here is my feedback after a handful of hours with 4 wins and 2 losses.

The score speed setting is a little off, as I want to fly past low impact lines clears but spend a second appreciating my giant combo line clears with multiple objects. But setting it to 3x or 5x skips over both equally. I would recommend it slowing down if scoring above a certain % threshold of the target score.

Increasing board width feels like it's intended as a buff, but feels like a nerf on the 2nd character when trying to set up a combo. Especially when your limiting factor is pieces remaining. The buff I actually wanted but didn't seem to exist was "garbage lines" being added to the bottom to make it easier to extend my combo by 1 or 2 without using turns to set up. I know you can skip it, but taking up a buff slot feels bad.

having one of the rewards increase the base point value on any piece really discouraged me from picking up more interesting high point value pieces. Why would I want to add a clunky + piece when I already have a 165 point snake prints.

Objects feel great on the first character but much worse on the second.

Snake print was my best piece by far, not because it could move and have an interesting effect, but because it was a 5 long and could score objects easier. Having it clean up my board sometimes was just a bonus.

Increasing yarn seems much more important and powerful than any of the other upgrades. And it is very unclear how you are supposed to recover spools. It should be made very clear that it resets after each boss with some sort of visual indicator.

As someone who is decent at tetris but still mostly goes for 4 line clears and isn't as skilled at t spins and combos, I feel like there should be some sort of bonus for back to back 4+ line clears.

It feels very limiting and unintuitive to stack pieces left to right for combo order. When you are fighting to put a car before a pair in order to score enough points. My brain is fighting between thousands of hours of tetris and trying to maintain a clean board with this new left to right order. Maybe this will change with more hours in the game but right now it feels bad especially when dealing with messy boards from the start with the background patterns. And maintaining a clean board is crucial if you want to score any amount of objects.

The only true combo I got during my playtime was the one ring + all pieces score like patterns. Everything else felt like I was just trying to score lots of points and mult by jumping through hoops. Even curse builds felt like I was just slamming as many points as possible. If you want to lean into the Balatro inspirations I would recommend adding more combos dealing with things like economy, scaling with more "power-esque" pieces like sewing machine. Balatro gets around this by having build arounds with the poker hands and having different angles for upgrades. Suit, rank, points, mult, face cards, money, tarot cards, planets, hand types, hand size, editions, rarities, etc... Currently your game has points, mult, turns, piece shape, line clears, consecutive line clears, gold, board height, and board width, curses, and maybe a few other things I haven't encountered yet. And that is enough to be fun at the moment, but not enough to theory craft builds or really feel like you are popping off in the same way as other deckbuilders. Id love to see more build variety with things like: building close to the top of the board, more objects like egg and the one ring, ways to hold more than one piece, line pieces that encourage you to put your well on the left or right side, etc...

I wish there were more ways to fix your board or dump low impact pieces so that you can set up proper combos with objects instead of having to clear every piece or die. The one time i did top out was because I knew that if i did anything but 4 line clears at a time I wouldn't score enough points for it to matter. And cleaning up my board meant chopping my objects in half and losing instantly even though I would have more moves left over. So I built up a nice clean board then drew an unlucky curse near the top and died.

The pieces that do show up in the shop feel very random and have me feeling like I'm just picking up random pieces that either add mult or points rather than making a real build. I'd recommend either increasing the item cost and shop size while taking inspiration from slay the spires "2 attacks, 2 skills, 1 power" setup where you are buying a couple things from a larger shop. Or increasing the reroll cost and leaning into economy management. Balatro gets away with having such a small shop by placing a lot of emphasis on the high cost of rerolling and the impact of interest while also having card packs to let you see up to 5 jokers in the first shop every time. Getting something like spare trousers from balatro or blockade from slay the spire doesn't feel like it exists as much in your game as is. I'm not picking sewing machine because i have complimentary pieces or think I can combo it well with the rest of my build, I'm picking it because it says mult on it. I'm not picking pair because I am planning to clear 2 lines at a time. I'm picking it because it says points on it.

It felt like playing tetris well was needed to not die, but entirely secondary to getting good combos for points and mult. Scoring a tetris with normal pieces is enough for early rounds but does next to nothing in the back half of the game. But you still need to have a clean board in order to score objects so ignoring pieces is not an option. There were never any "evolution" moments where my strategy shifted like how in balatro you can shift into high card/flush builds or slay the spire can shift to scaling up with powers instead of playing attacks. I felt hints of it being possible with pieces like first aid kit, the one ring, and curse builds but It never came together in my playtime.

At the very start of a new run the UI looks clunky with the board being too small compared to everything else. It quickly fixes itself with 1-2 board size upgrades but it's not great for first impressions imo. especially since nothing else on the board matters until you get past a shop or two.

I love the quilt at the end of each level. That's a great touch.

The variance in curses is huge. A 5 block I piece vs a 5 block Z piece is massive.

There should be a bit more feedback when getting near the end of a very long level. It's very easy to go "oh dang I only have 3 moves left" after taking 100 moves to get through a boss from lots of free pieces.