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[Udderdude]

Strat Tech is a turn based strategy game similar to Advance Wars, except instead of focusing on hard counters and generic unit types, it focuses on specific unit classes and abilities.

There's 10 normal classes, and 10 elite classes, with 5 abilities each.  The normal classes are simpler and easier to use, while the elite classes are more challenging to use effectively.  However they make up for this by being immune to all disabling effects from the normal classes.

It's quite complex, so get ready for a bit of a learning curve.

Site: http://rydia.net/udder/prog/strattech/index.html

10 level demo: http://rydia.net/udder/prog/strat/index.html

[sevn]

[the reason I didnt play yours and cannot give feedback]
I'm a fan of turned based games, but its an investment of my time to play one.

[what I can say though]
Edit your post to include more information such as Controls, or how the game plays.

16 words, a link and a screenshot doesn't cut it, especially for a turned based type game.

[eobet]

16 words, a link and a screenshot doesn't cut it, especially for a turned based type game.

Imo, a picture says a thousand words, and his is very descriptive. However, what it tells me is that it looks like a game from 1990 and the UI seems to be from that era as well, and it's not done in a charming, nostalgic fashion either... unless there's some irony here I'm missing.

Also, without having played it, it's easy to spot some criticism: Both the symbols used and unit graphics are way too similar and it's not intuitively apparent what they represent.

And finally, are they floating in space, yet constrained by a circumference of walls?

Utterly confusing, but it's a hardcore genre, so enthusiasts might not care...

[C.A. Sinner]

Neat little game. Starts out a bit slow but gets more interesting as you get further into it.

A couple criticisms:

Interface: Game window is too large. I use a 15" laptop screen and have to scroll down to see the bottom menu. I'd say make the window smaller and use scrolling/panning. You have a minimap feature implemented already so that should take care of that. Also the unit sprites are too small and I probably need a microscope to properly see the health and energy bars. And lastly, because actions both use up energy and are limited per turn, you should totally show how often an action can still be used somewhere in the command window.

Mechanics: I feel that individual turns take too long in this game. It's hard to keep track of what happens in enemy turns because they're so fast. You should think about limiting energy and the number of times actions can be performed per turn more.

That's all, hope it helps.  

[nebuch]

i love games like "disciples 2" its most beatiful form of turn-based strategy. a little like, pokémon. this looks good too.

[Udderdude]

Neat little game. Starts out a bit slow but gets more interesting as you get further into it.

A couple criticisms:

Interface: Game window is too large. I use a 15" laptop screen and have to scroll down to see the bottom menu. I'd say make the window smaller and use scrolling/panning. You have a minimap feature implemented already so that should take care of that. Also the unit sprites are too small and I probably need a microscope to properly see the health and energy bars. And lastly, because actions both use up energy and are limited per turn, you should totally show how often an action can still be used somewhere in the command window.

Mechanics: I feel that individual turns take too long in this game. It's hard to keep track of what happens in enemy turns because they're so fast. You should think about limiting energy and the number of times actions can be performed per turn more.

That's all, hope it helps.  

Thanks for the feedback.  I've made the following changes so far :

Grid size reduced from 28x28 to 24x24.  Should fit in most browsers w/o having to press F11 now.

Added how many attacks/moves the unit has left to the info box at the top of the screen.

On Beginner and Normal, the enemy will take more time between moving each unit to give the player a better idea as to what's going on.

[Udderdude]

I've updated the game with a ton of new stuff, new levels, etc.  There's two new elite classes, the Defender and Archer.

The screen grid is now 24x24 so it should fit in most browser windows w/o having to scroll.

[Dr.Electro]

gave it a short test. definately playable.

maybe change the action grid according to the action at mouse-hover.
i was frustrated when i moved in position and realized that i cant attack diagonal.

[Udderdude]

Thanks for your feedback, I've changed it so the cursor turns into the hand cursor when hovering over a clickable object.

Here's a shot of all the classes in the new update :

[Cosr]

I like this.

It definitely feels slow at first. Partly, I think it's just due to the mechanics; having multiple weak attacks, and the high number of abilities your units can use each turn. But once I got used to it, I started to like the feel of the system. The high amount of actions per turn, but the limit on how many times you can use an action, helps encourage the use of the full range of your units' abilities, which is nice.

The levels do ramp up a little slowly, though. I haven't played through all the levels yet, but they are getting more interesting. I guess I'm not really out of the tutorial levels yet (I'm at level 9), because so far I've always had a serious advantage over the enemies (I'm playing on Advanced and decided to play through the unit introduction levels). It might be worthwhile to introduce an element of challenge earlier. I figure the player will still be able to learn new elements while being presented with something that's not so easy. Bringing a bit of difficulty into the game sooner, I think, might make the earlier levels more interesting and engaging.

I think it's too difficult to tell if a unit is on a Field right now, and when they are on a Field there's no way to tell what sort of Field it is. Unless you've memorized the unit's basic stats I guess. Also, the little circular auras under each unit make it look a little like they're always standing on a Field. It might be enough to list the type of field the unit is standing on in their display of buffs/debuffs.

[Udderdude]

The next update is getting an entirely new set of tutorial levels that are more interesting and challenging.  They'll also be very challenging on Expert.

I know things start out slow, but when you've got this much stuff, shoving it all in the player's face at once can be a bit ridiculous.  The current plan is to introduce one class per level for 18 levels.  Yikes!

I'll see if I can add the fields as status effect thing.  Thanks for the feedback!

[CorazonAzul]

My gripes mainly have to do with accessibility, which can't be expected until later anyway. I'd like to see a balance of text:icons to explain the field+units and/or consolidation of existing ones, in order to unclutter the interface and simplify planning strategies. I know some good names are behind this one, so keep up the good work

[Udderdude]

After lots of hard work and both me and Matt getting sick (ugh), we've finally finished the next update for Strat.  Lots of new stuff here :

10 new tutorial levels, replacing the old tutorial levels
11-15 have been redone slightly
16-20 are completely new levels, including the game's first boss fight!
Lots of interface improvements, new icons, option to have the info/command bar in a fixed location, etc.
Two new elite classes - Knight and Sorcerer
Finally added some music!

Any feedback is still appreciated.

[Udderdude]

Bumping this because I've updated the game with some new stuff - a zoom feature, and some improved interface stuff.  There's also a few merged/changed class abilities.  Still looking for any and all feedback on this game.

[Toeofdoom]

I like it and I think I will enjoy the strategy behind it, but it has a lot to grasp. Do you have any thoughts about communicating everything to the player more smoothly? That seems to me like it would be the big hurdle and I'll add some thoughts. (And it turns out I took a while to stop. UI design/usability is complex )

Clear, easily communicated changes:
Remove health/energy bar borders to make the actual informative bit bigger. Could make the bars disappear when full.
Make panning easier. Screen edge panning or click + drag should both work fine, maybe do both. Actually, I can't even figure out how to pan at the moment!
Zoom should probably support middle mouse control.

I'd almost skip zooming entirely and try working with everything being bigger all the time. It would help heaps with reading damage/ability text and seeing sprites properly. In the long run, allowing the player to choose a resolution would be fantastic to offset this.
If you make it bigger, you might be able to actually have the energy bar as pods - IE you can actually see that you have 9 energy left because there are 9 dots, possibly with grouping for easier reading.

In general I think a whole lot could be taken from the Desktop Dungeons unity beta (and some of the above suggestions are from there). They introduce a huge number of classes in a slow but interesting way and do quite well at displaying information to players - not just the UI but the unit sprites which are all extremely distinct. This applies to things like "fields" too - just stick a symbol on them.

The ability UI is okay and in the end I think it suffers a bit from the amount of information you're trying to cram in (8 abilities with costs, complex descriptions, times you can cast it different recharge rates). Not unmanageable, by any means. So uh, here's an awful ascii mockup that would probably be better:

Code:

---------
|         |
|  Attack |
|         |
|X        |
|0  ///   |
|   ---   |
|   ///   |
 ---------Q

If I'm actually good at this, the information will be obvious but I'm probably not, so we have:
Use counters on the left. Adds to current version by showing maximum uses, and is much more obvious when it changes (crosses should be red or some other obvious colour)
Little lightning bolts = energy use.
In my mind, the hotkey Q ONLY appears when you hover over the button, but players might not realise it's actually a hotkey. Anyway, a tooltip or making it actually say "hotkey" as well might be handy, but (correct me if I'm wrong) you shouldn't need that information all the time - hotkeys are useful because they're memorised.

The descriptions up the top actually work quite well for their format - to improve significantly on that, you'd need a semi-graphical way of displaying them. I'll leave that to you as you actually know what the "language" would need to describe

Finally, a possible bug: There was some odd behaviour when using "restore" - It seems to do nothing, but use lots of mana. Not really sure what's going on there.

Uh, so, I hope it's helpful because the strategy seems to be cool.