Zoo

Favorite aspect: Residue combination mechanic

Least favorite aspect: Lack of specifics on enemies

Suggestion: Assuming that the enemies move in steps whenever the player places a card, I think there's potential for interesting interactions between types of enemies and residues. For example:
 - Enemies that are immune to specific residue effects
 - Enemies that remove all or a specific type of residue from tiles they move into. Maybe they receive some sort of positive effect from that
 - Enemies that try to avoid a type of residue, letting the player influence their movement
 - A residue that can "cover" and enemy for a time when they step on that tile or when that residue explodes, making them vulnerable to a different residue type explosion. Like getting covered in oil and being more vulnerable to fire damage

1. I like the idea of combining different elements to receive new reactions. It reminds me a little bit of the Game Little Alchemy, maybe you can get some inspiration there for cool combinations
2. Are the interactable tiles the floor where the player and the monsters are or is this seperated? I find it a bit much to have to control the character and fight with it plus having to play with the cards
3. Only have the cards, and let the player try to "conquer" the most tiles to win

Favorite aspect: The combinatorial aspect of the residues.

Least favorite aspect: Visual aspect of using a a tile map, instead of chars for casting those spell-like residues.

Suggestion: Keep the number of residues relatively small as a base (e.g. base=fire, wind, water, earth) and then use a technology-tree for improving the individual base residues. For instance for the base cases you could have only a rock-paper-scissors scenario, but by making use of the technology-tree things combinatorical aspects might play a bigger role, i.e. enabling percental damage etc..

Favorite Aspect:

Crazy creative combinations of abilities. 

Least favourite Aspect:

Potential unpredictability of the combinations.

Suggestion:

Add a clear Ability tree, where you can see which abilities combine with which and what damage they do to what kind of enemy. Otherwise its just frusttrating to learn. Maybe habe a clear index, and add abilities, which CAN clear out other remaining particles.

favourite aspect:

the residuals in the air are a cool idea. I like the planning ahead aspect but also the chaos that could ensue.

least favourite aspect:

none as of yet. good luck :)

suggestions:

• find a good balance between variety of cards and not overwhelming players and you as developers with all the different combinations that would be possible.

• maybe certain enemies are weak to specific elements.

Sounds fun.  

Are there clear rules on what mixes with what to yield what result?

What are possible results aside from explosion?  Flooding?  Smoke?  Noisy music?  Barking dogs?  More barrels of unknown contents?

You could have some fun with this.

Favorite aspect: The core game idea seems fun.

Least favorite aspect: You said that in your game world it is prohibited to mix different spells/elements. So why is the player supposed to do that? 

Suggestion: Your scope could become quite big if you dont limit yourselves to only a few elements and focus on implementing all of their interactions so that each of them has a viable usage. I would also expand on the lore to explain why the player has to "break" the rules set in your world.

Favorite aspect: I like that there are many different spells to combine and different ways to beat a level.

Least favorite aspect: Preventing players from mixing spells is not a good idea → limits the player.

Suggestion: I would focus on having a smaller amount of elements but make it so that every element can be mixed with each other to not limit the player.

Favorite aspect: The mixing aspect of the elements seems very nice and a solid game mechanic. If this can be done so that mixing A+B+C produces an intuitive result and discovering the combinations step by step it would be awesome.

Least favorite aspect: Because the player has to play with the hand that has been dealt to him/her, it could be a bit complicated for a beginner to begin a match if the cards are very bad. Maybe some rules about discarding/redrawing could be nice.

Suggestion: Some people have already given very good ideas like exploiting vulnerabilities of the enemies to certain combinations. Maybe the board could have certain meteorological effects/spells that given buffs/debuffs to the player or some obstacles that could interact with certain combinations (e.g. a tile of forest could get burn and spread the fire around, or a tile with water could be struck by some kind of electrical element). Maybe the combinations the player makes can have effects on the board for several turns.

Favorite aspect:
I really enjoy the idea of combining different elements to create unique and strategic reactions. It adds a creative layer to the gameplay, allowing for deeper exploration of interactions and emergent strategies.

Least favorite aspect:
It seems that the unpredictability of certain combinations could potentially frustrate players, especially if the outcome isn’t intuitive. If a player doesn't understand why a combination worked or failed, it might lead to confusion.

Favorite aspect: Solid card game background, intuitive theory of effect combinations.

Least favorite aspect:  Since you have effects for card combinations and prohibit mixed effects, if I'm understanding it correctly, the game will be like Mahjong or Team Fight Tactics where you need to try to get cards of certain combination patterns in hand to make effects. But it might be boring if you play Mahjong / TFT with yourself.

Suggestion: How about making it multiplayer? Harry Potter: Magic Awakened can be an example of how to make this kind of card game real-time and of more interesting strategies, you may want to have a look :)

Favorie aspect: I really like the idea of card game with chain reaction of elements. To me it sounds like a card game version of Magicka which I find very interesting.

Least favorite aspect: How the players first receive their initial cards is unclear to me, randomizing such mechanic might not make the game very fair 

Suggestion:  Maybe when you are dealt the cards , one can swap a certain number of cards (2 out of 5) once in the begining of the game (like similar mechanic in Hearthstone) 

Favorite aspect: The residual block idea gives the combination of cards a large room to explore.
Least favorite aspect: When players are testing a rare combination to find out the influence of an exact card, they might get depressed if the outcome does not match the player's expectations or common sense. (I like to do such things as a player, but when thinking from the developer's aspect I thought there would be a huge workload to satisfy curious players.)
Suggestion: Just from its name, sounds like residual effects from history cards never disappear. But I think adding some cutting off or attenuation to decrease effects from before might help simplify things.