Since I'm not sure where to start, let's talk about the last pre-publish change, which literally happened two weeks before I uploaded this mod: the removal of two buffs called "Powered Up" and "Graze".

While the names and icons of these buffs still exist in the current game (they were reused for other buffs), those two Buffs used to simply be "Attacks deal 33% more damage" for Powered Up and "Block gained from cards is increased by 40%" for Graze. They were designed to be the opposite and to counter Weak and Vulnerable/ Frail respectively.

Powered Up and Graze were the very first buffs I put into the game, because I wanted to include a reference to Touhou game mechanics into the game. Accelerator was created at the same time, so that Powered Up could go with Anger, Graze with Melancholy, and Accelerator with Joy. So, why did I remove them so late into the mod's development cycle?

Crane and Tortoise
"1 Popularity Loss
Anger: Gain 2 Powered Up
Joy. Gain 2 Accelerator
Melancholy: Gain 2 Graze"

The answer is two-fold.
1. These two buffs were printed on exactly 3 cards each, with 2 of the cards holding both of them. I could have added more cards that give or make use of these buffs, but there's where the second problem comes in.
2. There was no synergy. All Powered Up and Graze did was to make your cards have better stat points as long as it is active. Kind of like Vulnerable and Weak, but there are cards like Dropkick that do something special if the target is affected by them, but not only did I have no such cards, but... the effects are also just so boring.
This is, incidentally, why Accelerator is still in the game. If you want to use Accelerator, it nudges you into a playstyle that encourages a lot of card generation, card draw and cheap cards, which can result in an entire archetype.
What does Powered Up encourage? Playing high attack cards. Very interesting indeed.

Should I ever make a new mod character, I might revisit the original Powered Up and Graze buffs, but make an entire character focusing on buffs, who would get more benefits the more buffs they have, or something like that. (Byakuren comes to mind for such a buff focused character.)

Removing these two buffs meant that Full Power, a relic which originally made Powered Up more effective, and Focus Mode, a relic that originally made Graze more effective, were now useless.
Thus, I repurposed them into what they are now, which makes them significantly more interesting than they used to be.

Another thing that I had planned out early, but that was changed very early on, was in which way modal cards were to be used.
Originally, I wanted Kokoro to have cards that change depending on the current emotion, but I wanted the act of changing emotions to be expensive, so that the player would have to think about what they wanted to do ahead of time. In general, I wanted the cost of changing emotions to be around 0.5 to 1 whole Energy.
Unfortunately, this meant that I was unable to get out of Act 1, because cards that changed emotions were too expensive.

To remedy this, I printed some cheap cards that allowed you to change your emotions, but gave you a debuffs when used, e.g. "0 Energy: Become Angry, but gain 1 Weak"


Oni of Kurozuka
"Ethereal
Become Angry
Gain 1 Weak"

Short-Lived High
"Ethereal
Become Joyful
Next turn, draw 1 less card"

Mrs. Fuji's Regrets
"Ethereal
Become Melancholic
Gain 1 Frail


This, however, made things only worse. So I decided to make these cards a bit more powerful and, instead of giving a debuff, let them give buffs instead


Full-on Charge
"Become Angry
Gain 2 Powered Up"

Festive Celebration
"Become Joyful
Next turn. draw 1 card"

Cautious Maneuver
"Become Melancholic
Gain 2 Graze"


But the pool of cards was still flooded with a lot useless cards that don't really help you in the tide of combat. Worse yet if you draw multiple of these cards in the same turn.

So I rolled them all into 1 modal card called Fleeting Emotion (which had both Ethereal and Exhaust).
This helped a bit. I kept Full-on Charge etc. around alongside Fleeting Emotion, but the early game was still really rough.
I should also mention that Kokoro's original starting deck contained 3 Strike, 3 Defend, 1 Frenzied Strike which dealt 6 damage, 1 Retreat which simply gave 5 Block, Water Iris' Beauty (which still gave energy on the next turn back then), and Crane and Tortoise, which gave 1 Powered Up/ Accelerator/ Graze (the original ones described above), depending on your Emotion. And I might be wrong, but I believe Frenzied Strike and Retreat cost 2 Energy back at that point. Yeah, there's no surprise why I couldn't make it out of Act 1.

Eventually, I felt like having 3 different cards that are all just here to give you an Emotion and are otherwise worthless was too many cards. So I changed Kokoro's starting deck to 4 Strike, 4 Defend, Crane and Tortoise, and Fleeting Emotion. This smoothed out the early game a bit, allowing you to switch your emotions once, and encouraged you to pick up more emotion changing cards for the direction you want to go with.

But because I still could not make it out of Act 1 properly, I finally gave up on the idea of making changing emotions expensive and made it a free action, printing it on any card that did not make use of emotions (like modal cards). I scrapped all of the cards like Full-on Charge, which were only there two switch your Emotion, I reintroduced Frenzied Strike etc., but now only costing 1, and went back to the drawing board.

This isn't the last time we'll be seeing the name Fleeting Emotion, by the way. While it became obsolete by changing emotions becoming cheap, I did like the name (and art that I had made already) too much to throw it away, but it went through some more iterations down the line...

Throughout developing this mod, a total of 42 cards were either scrapped or changed in an impactful way. In this chapter, I wanted to go through some of these changes.
The cards are listed in the order they were changed/ removed from the mod.

Originally made you confused, to counter the high cost of changing emotions. When changing emotions became a free action, it turned into a 2 cost Power that let you gain 4 Block and deal 4 damage to a random enemy whenever you switched emotions. Yes, it is double of what it is now. And I still consider Saru Mask to be one of the best Power cards in my mod.

"Deal 8 damage.
Deals 4 more damage for any Followup played this turn. (later on "this combat")

This card was supposed to be part of a meta set of cards.
These cards are Fan Swipe, Setup, Followup, and finally Naginata Slash.
Why these cards in particular? If you look at the card art, you may recognize that they follow the same attacks performed by Kokoro in Hopeless Maquerade etc. during a normal attack combo.
My goal was to make Fan Swipe and Setup generate Followups, with Naginata Slash being the finisher and payoff of this combo.
Sadly, you would either need to play a lot of Followups to make Naginata Slash useful, or increase the numbers on this card to ridiculous extremes, so I first decided to let Naginata Slash count all Followups played this combat rather than just this turn, until I decided to scrap the card altogether several months later.
Ironically enough, with how many cards generate Followups nowadays, Naginata Slash might have actually been playable.

"Non-Status and Non-Curse cards no longer Exhaust."

I had originally meant to create a lot of high power cards that would exhaust, and have this version of this card be the big payoff for such an archetype, but sooner or later, all of my Exhaust cards were gone, making this card useless.

"Anger: Deal 9 damage
Joy:Gain 1 Energy, Draw 1 card
Melancholy: Gain 6 Block"

This card was a less powerful version of Release Emotions, but when changing emotions became a free action, Release Emotions was nerfed as the downside of becoming emotionless was not really a burden anymore. As such, Flow of the Masks and Release Emotions became too close in power level, meaning I had to scrap one of them.
I did later reintroduce a card called Flow of the Masks, albeit with a different effect.

"Next turn, deal 4 damage to a random enemy for any Attack you have in your hand, and gain 3 Block for any Skill you have in your hand.
Joy: Performance
If played via Encore, gain [E] instead"

Close to what it is currently, but its effect was delayed until next turn, rather than executing the payoff when being played via Encore.
On its Encore, it just gave you 1 Energy. Which was pretty trash.
So, because I never picked it, I turned it into a card that would let you draw cards, actively helping you out with its main effect of dealing damage and giving you block for each card in hand, but moved it into the encore portion to keep the aspect of "Joy cards give benefits at a delay"

Stealing Hope
"Whenever an enemy takes damage from a Buff/ Debuff, you heal half that much HP."
Kitsune Mask
"Any time you take unblocked damage, deal that much damage to the attacker."

Stealing Hope was pretty much only made to support Kitsune Mask, even though the later of the two lived for a few months (not active development time) longer.
Funny enough, Thorns/ Countered and Trapped were added later on as a main gimmick, so nowadays, Stealing Hope would probably be busted. Maybe I should bring these two cards back, now that there is proper support for them...
Well, if I did, Stealing Hope would need to be heavily balanced.

First Version: "Whenever you inflict Weak on an enemy, gain Powered Up.
Whenever you inflict Vulnerable on an enemy, gain Graze."
Second Version: "Whenever you gain a buff, inflict an equal amount of the corresponding debuff on ALL enemies. (Powered Up : Weak; Graze : Vulnerable; Accelerator : Trapped")

Another card that had two revisions, the last one happening with the removal of the original versions of Powered Up and Graze.
My comments for why I removed the first version read "Kokoro is a character all about buffs, so she has access to buffs more so than debuffs (they even start in her initial deck). Kokoro needs more help with inflicting debuffs as well. As such, reworked."
Funny how that changed, because with Trapped and Countered existing and having a lot of support, Kokoro has actually become a Debuff centered character.
Sadly, the second version did not work anymore with the removal of Powered Up and Graze, and has since been reworked into a support card for Trapped and Countered, which, if I'm honest, is my favorite version of this card, so I'm glad I decided to remove the old buffs.

"Become Melancholic.
Gain 12 Block.
Remove 1 random Buff from a non-Boss enemy"

This card broke Elites. Admittedly, this was entirely intentional at first, but eventually, I decided to turn it into a Trapped support card.

"At the start of your turn, upgrade one random card in your hand for the rest of the combat."

This effect was rather boring, and at this point in development, I needed some more support cards for existing mechanics, so it turned into a Compensation support card.

"Performance
Anger: Deal 8 damage !M! times.
Joy: Gain !M! Energy.
Melancholy: Gain 6 block !M! times
Emotionless: Gain 2 Popularity !M! times.
Encore remains any time it plays a different Emotion effect.
Increase the amount of times any time this uses Encore, resetting once this card gains Performance."

Oh god, this mess of a card.
Not only is it barely legible because of how much text is on it (this was before I introduced the Emotion Bound keyword and UI), but it's also incredibly difficult to balance. Make it cost 2? Now all the effects must either very weak, or the card is broken. Make it cost 3? Now the card does nothing the turn it is played compared to its cost.
It's also way too difficult to set it up, unless you have Control Emotions or the Frozen Eye. So, in the end, I decided to scrap this card, even though I love the concept.

"Performance. Gains Encore at the end of turn.
Become Joyful
Draw 1 card.
If not in Encore, increase this card's cost by 1."

Speaking of messes, this card.
I like the idea of clunky card draw, but by the time I removed this card (we are in the final stretch now), I needed more card slots for actual support cards, so sadly, it had to go.

"Choose and Gain an Emotion
Gain 4 HP
Exhaust"

A survivor from the times when changing emotions was more expensive.
I realized how Kokoro does not really have any synergy with life gain and loss, so I decided to remove this card for proper archetype support.

"At the start of your turn, choose between and gain a random Attack, Skill or Power into your hand."

Again, no synergies with anything in the game, so it was removed. Simple as that.

(Originally gave the old Powered Up on Anger and Graze on Melancholy instead of their current effects)
They had to be reworked when I removed Powered Up and Graze.

Yuya's Blossoms originally read "Become Melancholic. Gain 5 Block." and was in the starter deck.
This card is in the slot that is currently held by Retreat. Retreat and Angel's feather robe were added to EVERY deck I made, because of how powerful they were. So, I decided to nerf the Feather Robe a tiny bit, move Retreat into the starting deck by removing 2 Block to bring it down to the power level of a starting card, and turned Yuya's Blossoms into a support card for Countered, which is a mechanic that was originally printed on only 2 cards, but is now a bit of an archetype? I'm not actually sure, but I tried to do that at least.

These were not all of the cards that were removed or reworked. The remaining ones belong to an archetype, though, so I want to give them a proper chapter.

Emotionless cards used to be cards with very high power effects or statlines, but had the downside that they could only be played if you were emotionless.
This meant you had to build into emotionless early, or never at all, as most of the time, you were not able to make use of the emotionless cards. Back then, there were less ways to become emotionless, too. Specifically, Kokoro Roulette and Control Emotions did not have Emotionless as an option.
So instead of forcing certain cards together via restrictions, I reworked the emotionless package to instead be mediocre cards, that become very powerful while emotionless by getting extra effects, like gaining Performance or becoming multi targeting.

The card that went through the most iterations is New Mask of Hope.
It was a card you picked either early, or never, despite its high power, simply because of how useful it is to have emotions.
Some of the attempts to bring New Mask of Hope down a notch was to randomly gain an emotion (upgraded only triggers some turns) to force you to play cards that erase your emotion. While this was a good step in the right direction, it made me realize just how good Joy combos with emotionless with its card draw and delayed energy gain. I also did not like the random nature of the upgraded version, and playing multiple copies of this card had no further dowside, so I turned the downside into Status cards that get shuffled into your deck instead.

Another card that became nuts after the rework was Rational Strategy (now called Study Plans), as it doubled its Block when emotionless. Yes, the doubling doubled with New Mask of Hope, giving you an easy 40+ Block from one card.

Countered as a mechanic was expanded upon at the very end, so it was not nearly as well tested as any of the other mechanics.
It used to exist for a long time, but it had no keyword and only existed on two cards. The effect used to be "Take X damage for each hit dealt this turn", which annihilated any enemy with a lot of attacks, and was just worse Thorns otherwise. In fact, it was just worse Thorns period. Which is why it now stays for a couple of attacks, being halved after every hit instead. This allows for some higher numbers being printed on Countered cards, without breaking certain encounters.
After this rework, a few more cards and a bit more support was added in favor of some other cards that had no synergy, and now it is a mechanic that should work somewhat well.

Where Countered works the best is alongside Trapped.
Trapped existed for a long time, originally as a mechanic strictly for Shouting Spider Mask.
I wanted to replicate the effect in the fighting game; the first time you use the attack, you trap your enemy in some spider webs, and the second time you use it, you hit the enemy no matter where they are. And since the enemy is usually flung around, it is easy to land a follow up attack.
So I needed an attack that changed its effect on its second use, and I wanted the payoff to be cheaper attacks.
This was the first draft of Trapped. A status that did nothing until certain cards are played to create a payoff.
However, this was a little slow and boring. I wanted to add a bit of decision making into the mix. Maybe you don't WANT to erase the Trapped on an enemy, or how about adding more Trapped first for a better effect? This meant that Trapped needed an effect of its own.
So the second draft was to have Trapped just deal 1 damage per stack. This was a little underwhelming, and meant you always just used Trapped for the effect the cards provided you.
To make things a bit more interesting, Trapped then dealt 1 damage per stack for each unique debuff on the enemy.
Finally, Trapped was actually doing something. However, at this point, Trapped was printed on four cards: Shouting Spider Mask, Restraining Binds, Trap of Kuchisake ("Apply 2 Trapped.
If target is already Trapped, remove all stacks of Trapped and gain that many Thorns."), and Sticky Web (which simply applied 3 Trapped at this point, doing nothing else).
To turn it into a proper mechanic, some more cards were given Trapped, Sticky Web made it easier to deal damage with Trapped itself, and some more cards were reworked to give more Debuffs to enemies, like Emotion Link giving debuffs to all enemies when you played a buff, or later simply spreading debuffs out to all enemies.

Funny enough, but Trap of Kuchisake's effect was considered too weak, partially because you could just deal more damage by leaving Trapped as Trapped rather than converting it to Thorns. Now this effect is back on Sighing Osakabe, but with Countered instead. Since Countered is allowed to have higher numbers without going out of control, you can gain more Thorns, too, which makes this effect a lot more desirable.

Interestingly enough, this keyword combo barely changed since its inception, despite being one of the first mechanics introduced.

From the get go, I wanted to have a mechanic named Encore, where a card would be played multiple times while paying its cost only once.

The original version would move a card with Performance into the discard pile, like normal, but once the discard pile was shuffled back into the draw pile and you drew the card with Encore active, the card would play automatically for free.

This caused some problems with cards like Melancholy Mask, which would change its effect when played via Encore. The first time you play it, it's a defensive card, but the second time around. it's offensive, so during the offense cycle of your draw pile, you'd be down one defensive card, creating some imbalance in your deck and usually caused me to take a lot more damage.

This, alongside the fact that it just took too long for the Encore cards to make a return and finally give the payoff for their increased initial cost, made me change the mechanic to instead shuffle Performance cards back into the draw pile. This kept the randomness of when the Encore would trigger, but sped it up by quite a bit.

This decision also caused me to embrace the theme of "shuffling cards into your draw pile" with cards like Leitmotiv and Dress Rehearsal.

And there we have it. All (or at least all that I remember) of the changes that happened during the initial development process.
I learned a lot regarding game design (of card games)while making this mod, and I'm really glad I created this mod.

I hope you had fun reading through all of this, and more importantly, I hope you enjoy playing my mod.