Another Review for the Pile!

[Doctor Teo]

Just played almost 4 hours of None Shall Intrude (abbreviating as NSI), and I figure I'd post a review, since it's not letting me post one on the store page.

Overall, pretty neat game. Clearly takes a lot of inspiration from Slay the Spire, but with a checkerboard map that emphasizes dealing environmental damage through warping the map itself by setting it alight, creating firebomb traps, and a number of other goodies.

I have some nitpicks of course, including...

-UI is a little rough in places. There'd be times I was in the shop or at a card reward screen, wanting to check my deck or review a terrain interaction, but the screen would open behind the menu I was already on, and I had to do a lot of fiddling just to be able to check what's in my deck versus what I was going to buy.

-Relics vs. base damage. A lot of the terrain interactions are super cool, and can get boosted by the relics you find, but I find the power is a little too skewed in favor of the relics themselves. A basic Fire Bomb deals 400 damage baseline, but I might a single Relic that boosts that by 1000, for 1400 damage. I might even find another relic of the same kind that adds another 500, bringing Fire Bombs to 1.9k. That's nice and all, but I also feel a little shafted for trying to use baseline Firebombs, Fire Tornadoes, or Boulders, since they only function about at 1/3rd power unless I get the exact relic that boosts it. A little strange that some terrain interactions are perfectly fine baseline, while others are useless.

-Enemies being in melee just don't hit that hard. I get the idea behind the wind interactions, using wind to shoo away enemies and prevent them from hitting you, rather than Earth which negates damage through armor. But the melee attack of these heroes is often inconsequential -- I fear the special attacks they can do at range much more than I fear them getting close. I would have liked to see the ordinary non-hero knights be a bit more threatening, and have some of the hero damage moved from their 'cards' to their melee.

-Start of game deck could use variety. One of the things I was noticing is I was always somewhat predisposed towards being a fire dragon. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy being a fire breathing dragon, but it made it difficult to switch into other elements since many of those starting cards already worked with each other, and once I picked up cards like Flame Circus or Pyroblast, it felt like I was locked into fire/lava synergies, with wind being only used to regenerate AP. I would have liked an earth or wind centric starting deck.

-Very little card draw? I wasn't seeing a whole lot of cards that helped me cycle my deck besides the one 'on inhale, draw', which I felt stiffled some potential combos, especially since my fire/wind runs had so much AP to burn, the game has ways to reduce AP costs, and many cards benefit from having a certain amount of cards played before them. For weaker or more expensive cards, I would have liked to see draw on them.

-Merchant feels basic? One of the things about Slay the Spire is the merchant has tons of options, but you don't have a lot of control over when you get to visit him. In NSI, once you discover a merchant you can use them once at any time, but there's not a lot in the shop, and the strat is clearly to wait until you have a bunch of money piled up and go only once. I don't know if the merchant should be a free action, should have a limit on removals per visit, or what, but the merchant feels a little flat.

That's all I got for now. I do think the game has a solid concept, I love the idea of being the raid boss, but it also feels a little basic for now. I would love to see how it evolves, given a little time.