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« on: March 16, 2013, 01:54:09 PM »
I pretty much went straight from the demo to pledging on Kickstarter. Even at this early stage the game-play feels very solid. The deterministic combat is great, and I really like how important positioning is. My favorite thing, however, is probably the shove/pull mechanic: for example, in the last map of the demo I had one of my units pull the archers off the tower with her mind. It was awesome, and, importantly, made me feel like I there were more ways to win then just sending my units up to stab the enemy in the face. The engineer likewise is a lot of fun, as it opens up the possibility of building barriers to funnel the enemy into a spot you can take advantage of. I hope you'll be keeping this stuff in mind designing the maps--I see a lot of potential to give people creative paths to victory.
Also, as a color-blind player, thank you thank you thank you for adding shapes to show which side a unit is on instead of just using a different color. I wish more developers did that.
The interface didn't win me over as much as the core mechanics did, and I'd like to hear a bit more about your plans for it. Specifically, I think context-sensitive clicks are sorely needed. For example, clicking on an enemy unit could bring up a menu of available attacks (if said enemy is in range), moving on top of a tile with a bag in it might automatically pick it up, clicking on an open tile could just move you there. Clicking on a button for every action works fine, but you could probably streamline things to the point where the menu-bar isn't even required. I also kind of liked the look of having buttons pop up on selected units rather then on a fixed bar, like in some of your old videos, although I'm sure you had a good reason for changing direction on that. Granted, I'm no game designer, so take my ramblings with the usual grain of salt.
Great game though! Can't wait to get the final version, and I'm glad the Kickstarter is going so well.