This is a very impressive entry for sure. As a bigger game than most, I do have a lot more opinions about the game than others as well.

First and most important of all is that I think the game is pretty dang fun and engaging. The puzzles are interesting to solve and the mechanics is simple enough to get the hang of it (once you got through the tutorials that is). I think for the most part, the visuals are super solid. There's a lot of visual effects that are used everywhere in cutscenes and gameplay alike, which feels really nice and make the game seems more polished. The audio is also not bad, but there's a few small bugs like when the turn finishes, it plays multiple click sounds at the same time so it sounds louder than intended.

I agree with some other commenters that the tutorials is pretty long and all the other dialogues are also long. I hope to not sound too rude but I honestly think that the dialogue is not that engaging, so it adds to the feeling of lengthiness. I understand you were trying to tell a story, but it doesn't have to be long to be good and stories can be told as much with other elements than text, which is not what players expect when they play a puzzle game like this. The tutorials could also use more visuals and showing what happens on the screen rather than just saying them in text. For example, if it's a bad thing to have monster fight each other, I think it's much more effective and funner for the players if you force them to drop it in incorrectly so they can see what happens. The first time I got a death was like in level 4 or something lol.

I also think that many things in the game is currently unnecessarily long. I understand that sometimes as creators we want to show off our abilities but I think sometimes less is more. For example, I think the loading screen visuals are cool, but I'm really not sure if it takes all that long every time to load a new level in and out. Many other animations are also longer than I would have liked to see.

On the mechanics side, I also agree with another comment saying there's currently just one too many step to do some of the most common actions in the game, like checking the info panel and then closing it for example. One mechanics that has to do with visuals is the direction that characters is facing determine their area of sight, and currently many of the sprite looks very similar when they look down versus looking left or right. It just takes that much longer to think and process the puzzle, so I always try to remove as many hindrances as possible when making a game.

Hopefully I don't come off as too nitpicky, but I realize that you are a more experienced developer than most jammers, so I would like to give my feedback on the tiny things that players appreciate in a great game. So I hope it can help you somehow in the future.

5/5 in every category. I cannot believe how much you got into this game in such a short time. You had animations, a cool level transition, sound effects, intense music, a tutorial, and lots of levels. I didn't finish the game, but it was really fun.

Very polished and beautiful game. I love your attention to detail, it shows that you care a lot about the quality of your work !
GGs and best of luck to you man, I think you easily deserve to be in the top 10 !
I'd love some feedback on my submission please <3

Oh, wow! I'm surprised the amount of content you got in this game! I haven't played all the levels, but it seems each level I did play was always introducing new mechanics and enemy types. I also appreciated the ability to skip dialogue when I had to redo a level. The animations also felt very polished such as the squash-and=stretch when placing monsters. Very impressive for a jam submission!

It took me a bit to get used to the mechanics. At first, I misinterpreted the dialogue and was having the monsters killing each other before I realized that's the opposite of what I was supposed to do, lol.  In the end, it really comes down to positioning and memorization as you have to try to remember what monster sees/attacks what to properly place other monsters in a safe tile. I am very bad at the game, but once I got the hang of the mechanics, I did feel I was improving bit by bit.

I do wonder if the monster info could show up on-screen when you click on them, rather than you have to make a second click on the info button? Could help improve the flow of each level a bit if I could single-click the monster and see what their sights/enemies are immediately. Especially with the timer forcing you to think quickly before the blizzard arrives. Also, maybe the monsters' sights could show up when you hover your cursor over them? Just some small tweaks to improve the flow by saving the player on clicks, especially since they will most likely be clicking a lot to re-check the monsters' info.

One mechanic I didn't care for was the blizzard timer. The game is about trying to position and remember all the monster details, which encourages you to take your time and think through your decisions, and the blizzard timer seems in opposition to that design. I do wonder if the blizzard mechanic could be better incorporated into the puzzle design better, like maybe the timer only increments after a turn, effectively giving you a limited amount of turns. Something to consider. 

Overall, this is a very impressive entry! There's a lot of visual polish and a good amount of mechanics introduced in each level to keep things fresh. Nice job!

Dang, that is one high-quality polished production. Charming, fun, great pixel art - well done!!! The dialogue is funny and the whole setup feels very clean and intentional. I know going the extra mile this way demands multiple late nights in these jams, so I hope you're catching up on your sleep because you freaking earned it! :)

Awesome presentation. I like the dialog and storytelling. One thing I can mention is the animation commitment; I could not skip any animation at all and there were many that could be skip.  I know internally there has to be a iteration throughout the tiles to check if other monster see the monster you just placed but there is no need to animate that because it takes time specially if you repeat a level many times. Same goes when gnomes move position. At some point, I reached Level 6 or 7 and there was always preventing me from winning and the animations were taking so long that I decided to review the game. Very good game overall. Excellent job.

BTW this is a lot of content for a gamejam, I guess you must have had prepared a couple of things before hand.

This was great fun and I'm still enjoying solving the puzzles!  I got a good laugh out of blaming the mechanics on bureaucracy :)

Some minor comments -

• There's a typo in the tutorial saying "right click" to select, but right click doesn't seem to do anything.
• There's occasionally a glitch where the monster becomes unselected for no apparent reason (not clicking elsewhere).
• The UI for monster range is a bit confusing - I thought the mushroom range was only 2 because of this:
• 

Did you use an existing conversation system/asset or did you build that from scratch?

Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuude this game is awesome!! Right up my street as far as mechanics go! If you did this in 10 days your one hell of a dev.  Feels like a FF Tactics, with a puzzle packing twist!! Agree with other peoples assessment of too much reading (i just skipped and still understood what was going on, don't feel bad i do that with most games. haha), but the execution is exceptional here. Feels like an indie you could download on xbox gamepass.  Hit me up if you ever need help with character design or an animation asset (check my jam submissions to see some of my work, or ask for my discord). Of course you have a clear and awesome art style all your own and probs don't need my help but had to offer! Hope you get a good result in the Jam!!

This is a really nice game, I'm not a fan of the amount of reading but that's just me. Great job!

Impressive game jam submission. Good job!

This is an excellent puzzle game, but I couldn't work out the mechanics because the monsters don't seem to always match their info page. There also seems to be no undo so you can be stuck in a situation where you can't do anything

Edit: could also do with keys to skip dialog. The enter button seems to work but only sometimes.

Really fun jam game!! The mechanic are really smart though it can be a bit hard to see a good place to put monsters. Sometimes when you hover a monster it'll show the path they are looking and other times it won't. This comes up most when the robots are introduced as I was never to sure which way they were going to attack. The sfx for the dialogue can get a bit annoy for long text strings, though good job trying to add a story. If the blizzard was more of a turn based than a timer it would feel a bit smoother.   

Well done a really solid jam game. The puzzle mechanic is a really good one. Its good that you tried to add in the story but it did end up getting in the way a little.