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[Soulliard]

I really like the pixel art and the designs! Pora is just the most adorable thing

I figured at least one or two of the monsters should be cute. Its design is heavily inspired by jerboas.

I also love the well thought out gameplay and the core mechanic of the Soul Wells that forces you to not only keep to a defensive and rather static tactic but rather makes you have to be more flexible. It also gives some great comeback possibilities.

I'm glad to hear it, since those were precisely my intentions. I'm still not sure if the mechanic is super intuitive, but it does serve those two important purposes:
1) It encourages you to spread out over the battlefield, instead of turtling.
2) It adds one more dimension to determining which player has the advantage, making comebacks easier.

Although the map is simple it is extremely well designed and balanced for the monsters you get in the demo. I'm looking forward to the maps you come up with for this game in the future.

It does the job, but I'm looking forward to adding more types of terrain. I arranged the two forces diagonally from each other so that there are multiple equidistant paths to reach the enemy. Another way to encourage you to spread your forces out.

It took me a few times to beat it (I'm not super good at tactic games) but I found the learning curve rewarding and failure did not really frustrate so much as it taught you. Was it just my imagination or did the enemy overseer have an enormous range though?

That's still good, since the two forces are pretty evenly matched. I'm glad you didn't find it too difficult to learn how to play. Hopefully that means that when I design the real learning curve, I won't need excessive tutorial elements.

The enemy's lightning bolt spell has unlimited range. It doesn't have an animation yet, though, which makes it a bit too subtle. Were you able to figure out that if you select an enemy unit, you can see the details for their attacks? That might be too well hidden.

[Soulliard]

This attack is pretty powerful.

[Alec S.]

Just played the demo (although I haven't won a game yet...).  I really enjoy it so far.  Really nice sprite-work and overall presentation.

I also love the well thought out gameplay and the core mechanic of the Soul Wells that forces you to not only keep to a defensive and rather static tactic but rather makes you have to be more flexible. It also gives some great comeback possibilities.

I'm glad to hear it, since those were precisely my intentions. I'm still not sure if the mechanic is super intuitive, but it does serve those two important purposes:
1) It encourages you to spread out over the battlefield, instead of turtling.
2) It adds one more dimension to determining which player has the advantage, making comebacks easier.

Yeah, the soul-well mechanic works pretty well, and it was fairly intuitive.  Basically, I could tell right away that they were point that I wanted to land on, figured out shortly after that that each team could capture them, and then it took me a couple of turns to figure out what benefit they gave me (which is pretty good, considering the game had no instruction, and I didn't read much about the game before playing the demo)

[Soulliard]

That's really good to hear. If people can figure it out on their own, then I only need minimal nudging in the right direction.

[Soulliard]

Here's another new monster, the Trolox. It's specialized in slowing enemies with vines.

[Soulliard]

There's a lot of dangerous flora in Monster Commander.

[Soulliard]

I just updated the game’s demo. While there are a number of small but significant additions to the AI and user interface, the most significant changes are new game modes. It’s now possible to generate a random battle, which can be played against the computer or a nearby friend. Random battles include a number of new monsters and spells. There are 11 monsters and 29 spells added so far.

Enjoy!

[JobLeonard]

BTW, you might want to add for which platforms the game is in the description

[Soulliard]

Good call. Although the game will be available on multiple platforms, the demo is for Windows only.

[Soulliard]

I really like how all the teleportation animations look in game. The monsters could have just flashed and disappeared, but I think this looks so much better.

[JobLeonard]

Very nice!

Idea: now it looks like the animal transports to an extradimensional space, and then back. What if you try to "sync" the disappearing and appearing on both sides. Doesn't even need new animations really; the second sprite animation just has to start earlier.