i adore this game

This is an amazingly innovative deck-building game that blends an impressive number of mechanics from other genres together to deliver an experience that ties the narrative and gameplay together on a level that I don't see a lot in other games.

The standout feature is how the game reframes the card suits to personality types in the game, and then tie each personality to the different geographical locations you're going to visit. As a result, the entire deck building experience is also recast as the protagonist changing their manner as they speak to more people outside of their hometown in order to befriend them as suppliers for your store. It felt incredibly immersive as I played through the game where each success and failure felt like there's an immediate narrative framing to them. If this sounds compelling to you, I can't recommend this game enough.

The game also provides a relatively open world to travel. Provided that the whole experience is very narrative driven too, there's a very high replayability as you cannot do everything in a single playthrough. Luckily, each game will only last for about 4-5 hours. But as a result, the smaller stories or quests can feel rather scattered and sometimes even impossible to complete. But I don't think it negatively impacts the experience too much. Overall it gives a feeling similar to Dead Rising or roguelites like Pacific Drive where you really have to plan out where you travel because of the limited time you have to travel, which again, ties back to the story in an incredible smooth way.