Hey there!
I had some spare time and played the game a bit. Changed my post not to double post
Since I could only have access to the tutorials, I'll comment mostly on gameplay elements since that's what's more important at this point.
Here are my comments in no particular orders.
It felt weird that, once you select a unit, you cannot select another. If you want to do so, you’ll need to press the ESC button. It would be best that, if you click another unit, it selects it. This would help to plan attacks. I can click a unit to see its range and then click another one right away. It’s possible to do that now, but you need to press a button to do it so it slows down the game.
This is particularly annoying when selecting an enemy unit without wanting to.
Also, I feel like you should be able to move the character around, select another character and then come back to the first selected unit and make it attack. Right now, when you select a unit, you can’t select another one or it’ll end your character’s turn. I feel it’s a bit too rigid.
There are two things wrong with the menu at the bottom. First, it’s too small. The icons are not very clear at this size and it seems to me that you could make them bigger by cutting on less important details, such as grass. The column could be shortened to make more room for the menu.
The second thing is that we absolutely have to press the End turn to continue, even if we can’t do anything else. Basically, I say that if I can’t do nothing, switch to the other player. You’re simply wasting game time. I just can’t seem to see why we’d want to wait. We done all we could so let’s move on.
The menus are a bit weird and don’t have a common standard. Since you’re developing for PC, you should follow the basic window standards. First of all, all Ok/Accept/Start buttons should be displayed in the bottom right corner. The cancel, stop buttons should be placed next to it, on the right. You should also enable the double clicking on elements. If I double click on an element in a menu, it should behave as if I pressed the ok button. Same thing for in-game menus such as when buying units.
The game seems a bit rigged. Always feels like the cpu is dealing more damage than I am. Dunno why I have this impression but it makes me feel like the game is being unfair.
I’m not sure I like how the player controls every part of the tutorial text. At first I was happy about it but at the same time, I felt like it losses a bit of interests because you can skip details and just play the game, which is not very “tutorial-esque”. Hence I’m not saying it’s bad but simply that I’m not sure about it.
The fog of war tutorial was quite difficult. I didn’t understand why my snipers couldn’t shoot when place din the wood. I felt like it was a natural move to hide snipers in the wood but the game didn’t think the same way
Speaking of which, the terrain bonus seems a bit too high. It really makes a huge difference when you put your units behind rocks. You should make sure that it’s not too powerful and that no one can abuse this.
I know it’s only a beta but I’d give more padding to the main title. Feels kinda empty.
I’m thinking that perhaps you could use the right click to call the attack of a unit on another. You select with the left click, and when you right click another enemy unit, it’ll attack it if it’s in range, If not it’ll tell us why it can’t.. right now, I feel that everything controlled with the same mouse button makes it a bit awkward. For the Mac platform, you could use a combination of click and button, such as shift-click or something.
Are there some counter tanks units? There are some counter soldiers, counter air but haven’t found counter tanks. It would be interesting to have this
It’s kind of annoying that you can’t buy something if a unit is placed on a factory/shop. One miss-click and you have to wait until next turn to move your unit and buy another one
I like how you can combien two units together but can't seem to really understand how it works. How does 2 men merge together like that?
Perhaps you could have them work as team, walking slower but attack two times rather then combining hp.
Overall, I like the game, but it feels a bit generic. What you got is good, but I wouldn't necessarly buy it on the spot. Try to think of something to make it less predictable. Try to add some elements of strategy that favors a player's imagination or something to change the startegies as you play the game.
Here are some ideas from the top of my head:
Push your merging concept: Try to use the merging mechanims to the max. Merging planes with tanks would allow you to parachute them. Give us a good advantage for using the merging system. Right now, it's mostly a sacrifice system where you take the hp of one unit and give to another. You could call it cannibalism and it would still fit.
Underwater combat: Submarines! Divers! Underwater snipers! Trained demonic seals unleashed!
Try to see if you could add the underwater combat aspect to your game, like adding another grid below your terrain. This could add alot of possibilities.
Terrain deformation: This is probably the easiest to pull. Make it so that one can destroy part of the terrain. This way, the strategies might chnage radicaly from one game to another while using the same map. Snipers hiding behind rocks? Blow up the rock! Problem is, no one can hide there anymore and you have to deal with it with new strategies....
Mass destruction weapons: gaz weapons that kills footmen, nuclar bomb, land mines, lazers, kamikazee planes... All those thing will add to the fun factor of the game and add some more extravagant strategies to the game. This way you can have players going "Sure, you shot down all my soldiers with you tank but there! I crashed my plane in your tank and now it's gone! Ha ah!". try to find how people would like to revenge themselves within the game.
So anyways, those are not very elaborated but just possibilities that you could explore.
Good job so far. the game as a nice feel to it, congrat your artist. The game plays rather wll and shows alot of promises but there are still things to do in my opinion.
Keep it up and keep us informed about further development!
Take care!
Guert
Developer
