I think this game looks SO nice! The lore seems fun, too, and I could see the story being interesting.

I'm excited for more mechanics to be added... The bones here are pretty cool!

The combat is pretty straightforward. I think it might be nice to add some sort of player interaction to it? As of now it seems like you just throw your guys into a battle and watch to see if they live or die. I think the combat could potentially be a bit more engaging if there was some kind of player interactivity involved. Maybe if the floating hand was holding a weapon or sword of sorts and you could wiggle it over the enemies to do a bit of damage... just spitballing here, but I think adding some sort of small interactive component to the combat could make it a bit more interesting, even if it barely did anything in terms of combat effectiveness. 

Overall, I'm excited to see where this goes. The gameplay loop that's here is pretty fun, and I could see it getting pretty intense with more refined resource management systems in place!

I played the game on stream here at around 17:45

• Youtube Timestamped Link
• Graphics : Generally very nice
  • I like the background / parallax / tower exploding
  • There's some spots that could do with a touch-up (Glitchy?)
• Music / Sfx:
  
  • SFX seem fine
  • Music is fairly non-existent , needs more.
• GUI :
  
  • Fine but could definitely do with a touch up in spots.
  • No options menu, needs graphical res / window options.
• Gameplay :
  
  • I'm hard pressed to call this a game in it's current form, it's more of a proof of concept than anything.
• Notes :
  • I like the idea that this might be a "Kingdom"-like but being more of an evil route than a good one.
  • I'd like to see more of whatever is happening in the background, more ambient happenings as the one that's there is well done.

As it is, there's hardly anything here to judge, it's far too early in development for me to give much constructive criticism on.

Hello! This is Ikiru from oldflowergames with some comments on your game. Overall there's a ton of potential here, and it already feels very polished. However, as others have said, it's tough to really give feedback because of the missing core mechanics. That said, here are some chronological notes from the time I spent with it:

    • Right from the start, the intro music feels very high quality, and sets the mood effectively.

    • The voice effects felt too loud compared to the music at the start, and the starts and ends are too abrupt. Whenever I’m dealing with a looping sound effect, I always do a very quick fadeout so you don’t hear the audio clip when it ends.

    • The blood effects look really good, especially the death animations.

    • The first enemies felt a bit too tanky to me. Especially without being able to see health bars or damage numbers, it just becomes a waiting game that doesn’t invite experimentation.

    • The floating hand animations + smoke looks so goooood! Since it’s the core of the game, it really feels great to be in control of something polished.

    • It would be great if your units were highlighted when you hovered over them, so you could tell what you’re going to select.

    • The writing feels solid and evocative, but right off the bat the encounters feel a bit too same-y (either “We’re attacking”, “give us money”, or “give us units”). And “Give us units” doesn’t really feel like an option, since it would leave you less equipped to deal with the next enemies. (Although the ability to recruit/build more units would alleviate this problem, and could make it an interesting conundrum.)

    • The periodic, seemingly random explosion in the background is a really intriguing touch that I liked a lot. Variety!

    • Not sure if this is intended or just a demo limitation, but once all my units were dead the enemies did not do anything once they reached the center. I assume this is the game over state, and I just had to restart, but actually seeing game over would be a big improvement.

    • Small Things:

        ◦ The pitch variation when you pick up multiples of the same unit type is pretty distracting. Our ears are REALLY good at picking out when a sound has just been pitch shifted (especially voice-like sounds). If you could have a few variations to cycle through with reduced pitch variation I think it would be much more effective.

        ◦ For demo purposes, it would be ideal if you didn’t have to click through the opening dialogue every time you restart.

        ◦ Tooltips for your unit types would be very helpful. I couldn’t figure out what the functional difference was between the two melee units.

        ◦ The tooltips following the mouse position on the dialogue options that cost money feels a bit odd. Personally, I’d rather see them pop up at a fixed offset.

        ◦ On the pause menu, “Double Tap – Acceleration” is a bit unclear. I think if you just add the [A][D] after double tap it would make more sense. (“Double Tap [A][D] – Acceleration”)

        ◦ Also on the pause menu, I would recommend adding a confirmation window to the Exit Game button.

    • Overall, the aesthetic presentation here is really solid. It already feels quite polished and satisfying to spend time in. However, I feel that the goal of a demo is to create excitement for the possibilities that the full game has to offer, and in this respect I don’t think it succeeds just yet. Your plans to add base building and more varied encounters are promising, but I think this demo is too barebones in it’s current state to hook the audience. I saw your post talking about a lack of engagement, and I definitely understand how frustrating that feeling is – I can tell you’ve put a lot of work into this already. But without more of the core mechanics in place, I don’t think there’s enough here to find an audience. Absolutely keep working on it though! There’s a ton of potential here.

Hi, this is a promising game. But as Hythrain said, its low on content/the content repeats and the deals are meaningless without basebuilding/progression.
The Combat ist cool, but also the perspective makes it not really nice to watch, as all units just agglomerate in one place. I would love for it to have more of a 2.5D perspective, where the units would actually be visible in combat because you had some depth. Gameplay could stay 2D, but for visuals a 2.5D / more isometric plane where they can walk would help.
The events reminded me of Bannersaga, which is cool. Once you have some other progression they will become meaningful and risk/reward will be intriguing. Setting is cool as well.
Keep it up, keep developing.

Hello! Welcome to Feedback Quest 8! My name's Hythrain, a co-host and one of the streamers for this event! This feedback is being written live as I stream your game! If you're interested in seeing my live reaction, let me know and I can send you a link to the VOD once it's posted to YouTube!

So my normal approach for any game in these events is simple: I get the game, make sure it's not a virus, then play it with as little information on how to play as possible. This way, I can judge how intuitively someone can figure out the game. Only if it's obvious that I need to read more will I do so. I note this so you can get a sense where some of these feedback comes from. In addition, I want to note that feedback and rating are different; don't use this feedback to gauge what I'll rate, nor should you view my rating as entirely indicative of my feedback.

When I first started this up, I loved the pixel art and was excited to see what it'd offer. I'll admit I was disappointed once I realized how short it is on content right now. I mean, it doesn't even have a game over state. As such, it's honestly very hard to give this proper feedback; it still lacks everything that would make it require said feedback. Sure, the combat is cool to watch but that's just about all you can do: watch. As such, I can't really give you anything. Once it has some of the features you're planning (such as base building, which I assume will allow the player to create new units), it'll be in a better position for that.

The only thing I can bring up is this... is the name Baphomet or Baphometh? He introduces himself as the former but is labelled as the latter.