Coin Tavern

Addictive. I played nearly 23 hours in the (rather generous) demo alone, and was hooked. If you enjoy the demo, you'll enjoy the full version. This review is mostly targeted at folks who have played the demo already. I won't be explaining the game mechanics. (Edit to add: I've just discovered the demo is apparently no longer available. That is immensely disappointing - it is what got me hooked on the game originally and made me buy it. I never like it when a dev removes the demo after release.) The full version adds a significant number of new coins (and a whole additional "race"), new relics, Quality of Life changes (including a per-round scoring tally for all of your coins to identify top/bottom performers, and better visibility for when coins are added or destroyed during a round), a series of themed scenarios, and custom scenarios where you can choose your own coin pool. There are also a number of balance changes from the last time I played the demo in May (I don't know if these were backported to the current demo version or not). The themed scenarios restrict the coins and relics available to provide distinctive and thematic strategic possibilities, but don't fundamentally alter the mechanics of the game (perhaps a missed opportunity). Some of the English translations can be unclear or clunky (the "LookUp" keyword still trips me up). At times it's unclear how exactly a mechanic works or how it interacts with others (the +1 jump on landing gem, for instance). But generally, I'm able to figure out how things work. Progression is unfortunately pretty linear. You will have to clear difficulty 1 and 2 of the previous stage before unlocking the next one. This locks the custom scenario modes behind around 5 hours of playtime. With my extensive experience in the demo, I was easily clearing these lower difficulty tiers but even at max 4x speed it takes time to finish a clearly-won run. A suggestion for the devs would be to 1. add the option for players to skip the difficulty progression and unlock all difficulties and scenarios from the start; and/or 2. give the option to end a run when the player accumulates enough score to clear all remaining targets (rather than making them play through all the remaining rounds). For example, if I'm on Stage 10/10 Round 2/10 and have already cleared the score target, I'd like to just end the run then if I'm not intending to go for Endless, rather than click through the 8 remaining rounds.