Great game. Unfortunately, I’m not really into turn-based games, but there’s no denying that this is an excellent, well-made title. I’d suggest moving the settings button on the home screen to the center or making it a bit more noticeable—though maybe the issue is just that I didn't pay close enough attention

Nice game. The aiming system is funny and the card system too. Did you implemented a saving system because I closed the game and when I came back: I lost my progression and my cards. And I don’t understand how to interact with asteroids and floating objects: does the cards effects occurs when I destroy them? Very promising game overall.

I had fun playing this. It took a little bit to get the hang of it, but I enjoyed learning and it felt rewarding when I made a good shot.

It feels a little odd to be able to add "Basic Attack" as one of your four cards slots when all 3 ship have Basic Attack as a default ability. I kinda get having it in the list of cards, so you can see what it does out of combat, but the first time I was setting my cards I wasn't sure if I needed to add it or not.

Sometimes it was hard to click on Stop when I was finished moving my ship but still had energy left. I would click on it, and it would rotate my ship. The first several turns in each combat it seemed to work fine, but then it would seem to stop working. At first noticed it happening when I had the ship I was moving, Spaceship, close enough to Assassin that the Stop was under Assassin's Health and Energy bars, but I also had issues out in the open away from other things.

I wish the End Turn button was placed elsewhere. I accidentally ended my turn a few times because I finished with the current ship and clicked the button before recalling that doing so wasn't just ending the character's turn. Where it is placed looks like it is for an individual ship, not all of them. I also think it would have been nice if there was a visual indicator that a ship had attacked and/or moved without having to click on them to see what I had done.

I didn't get some of the cards without turning on the debug option to see them all. I think the cards are all preset, but I'm not 100% sure. Are the locked cards ones you can get through playing the game right now, or are they meant to be unlocked in a later chapter?

I missed the opening story the first time through. I did the tutorial, and it listed the first mission as complete, so I went on to the second one. After beating the rest of them, I went back to the first, and got the story. It might be a good idea not to mark it as complete after finishing the tutorial to encourage players to start with that mission.

For card layout, I gave Spaceship Alpha 1 Laser weapons. I gave Assassin Alpha 1 straight shot weapons, like Double Attack and Hex Shot. I gave Support Tank Alpha healing cards and Sniper's Vision. I mostly kept my ships towards the back, though I moved Spaceship forward a little to make better use of the Lasers. I had a hard time hitting things with Support Tank, which felt intentional. The times I did hit felt really good, particularly the few times I got within the aiming range. I hit most of the time with both Spaceship and Assassin, and I got the Aim bonus with Assassin more often than I not.

In many ways, I think Double Attack was one of most powerful damage cards. Being able to hit twice without using any energy made it really useful. Pairing it with high energy abilities was particularly nice, because I could fairly consistently do multiple points of damage a few turns in a row while saving up for the more damaging abilities.

There was noticeable lag when I use Fibonacci Strike, regardless of how much energy I had. Some of the Laser abilities also sometimes had a lag.

If I used Godrin's Ring, my revived ship would get to act, even if they had already acted that turn. More often than not, I used it after losing a ship during the enemies turn. But there was once when I hit something that blew up and destroyed that ship, and they were able to attack again that turn because I used Godrin's Ring.

I really enjoyed Sniper's Vision. I found it very helpful with aiming.

I really enjoyed the art. The cut scenes were visually powerful, and the character images were full of personality. I liked how each ship looked different and felt like they fit the personality of the character. It was easy to tell the enemies apart, which helped with deciding what order to attack them in.

The story was compelling. By the end I had more questions than answers and wasn't ready for the game to be over. I wanted to help protect the people of the planet, and I wanted to learn more about the enemies and why they were doing what they were doing.

This was fun. I look forward to seeing more of the story and what new abilities are going to be added.

Yes, this is fun. I had a bad time aiming with the support tank. Plus, I like the first cut scene and the transition animation. The story seemed solid.

Played in Browser.

Interesting visuals, tutorial was pretty easy to understand and get moving quickly. This game felt like legit demo or clean vertical slice for a much bigger game. I was surprised how much I got out of it. Also, I didn’t know I couldn’t shoot overlapping my allies, my bad. Maybe the United Government are evil... Because I got one ship killed, it let me “repair” it from 0 after the mission, but in the next area it wasn’t available on screen to use. Maybe intentional, as later I unlocked a revive, but “repair” might be confusing for fallen ships if that was the intention. And I learned what ruefully means today! One of the ships is really hard to aim for not much reward it feels like = support tank alpha. Maybe intentional and it builds up later in the story, I just didn't notice much of a difference in damage vs the reward of getting it straight. Spaceship alpha1 would just auto attack and waste their turn when fighting the AA Defender and would continue to do it randomly afterward. Looking into it, might be registering clicks at the bottom of the screen between turns before the ui comes back for my turn; as I’m clicking through dialogue > it clicks an action. Might be nice if I can take back a mistake when still my turn or a way to quick wipe and start a run over when I know it’s already impossible to continue. Fibonacci strike also causes a brief stutter every time I use it (again, I was in browser, so maybe this is fine on the downloaded version). Overall had a lot more fun than I anticipated! Like I said, this felt like a demo to a much bigger game. I’ll be interested to follow the progress!

Looking at your questions,

• Game fun? Yes, at first it can seem like it’s going to be complicated, but once you get through the tutorial, it is actually pretty easy to pickup and play mission after mission.
• How catchy is the story? I only have a minor “opinion” from the beginning: 
  • 1) Can we get a little more setup on the main characters and the united government? Kinda give me more reason to care about these characters since it goes straight into this big battle with an alien space fleet who later challenge my allegiance to this “united government” (who I know nothing about currently. I could be bought!). Not much, just a brief window into understanding. 
  • 2) Take or leave this one, opinions alert: the opening scene/dialogue, “We peacefully protested against them but they started openly killing us to “set an example”.” ‘Peacefully protested’ might sound a little more current day way of phrasing it vs this advanced technological world/future and these people appear to be even more separated/regressed from it. So maybe some rephrasing and practice of reduction to more like, “We protested peacefully… They made an example of us.” I think because you already have the art visuals for dead people and blood, you could skip reiterating the “killing” and also make the topic more hesitant and remorseful. Sort of like, the pain hits harder when the reader/player has more they have to interpret from the context given. A person’s own imagination is more powerful and personal to them than anything we could write. Kinda like how in scary games or movies, not showing the monster or the whole monster has the person, experiencing it, filling in the blanks for what could be there. Very potent stuff. So for the darker moments in story, more visual clues and saying less can hit harder. Again, opinions, you’re the visionary at the end of the day and I can say, I think it has a good balance of dialogue <to> playing the game. Sort of leaves me on a cliff hanger for now until we see what comes next. The zoom out scale of the crazy overwhelming odds that was coming was impactful since, as the player, I know at this point how combat plays out and how insane it would be to fight this entire fleet. I did enjoy the raising of the stakes and can’t wait to see what crazy thing I’m thrown into next!

This is a really fun turn-based game, I’m liking it a lot.

The character art is beautiful, and the design of the cards is great.

The cutscenes are also very well executed.

The only thing is, the player spaceships look a little strange. I think it would be better to change their design.

But overall, I love the storytelling and the gameplay!

Honestly, I was kind of stunned. Sure, it is still a prototype but I was really impressed and really had fun playing.

For a more detailed review:

Positive aspects

• Well, talked about the visuals of our games but look at that! I really like the art, especially character designs, they are so cool and I really enjoy your style.
• Battle gameplay is awesome. The idea of aiming instead of just throwing attacks is a very good idea and you make it even more meaning full with the different types of attack, characters/enemies placements, astroid, etc. Honestly, It felt kind of hard to handle (or maybe I just suck at aiming lol) but it was not punitive thanks to the smooth progression curve. I also found very cool and impressive the card skill system.
• I enjoyed the intro very much, especially the effort put in synchronization with the music (the zoom, flash, change of colors etc.)!

Improvements

Well I don’t have much to say on what is already present! From what I understood, the gameplay loop here is only dialog/battle/card/dialog/battle, etc. Do you plan to add more mechanics/elements in the future or are you leaving it as is?

Anyway, very solid prototype! I am impressed!

Hey! you did really well job! I really like how you made the UI, it's pretty clean.

Character's art is really good!

Story looks interesting, characters are catchy. I was not pretty sure about intro scene with the child. Maybe I didn't read it properly. 

What bother me is mixing a tactic turn-base game with skill-based aiming. I was confuse because I was missing my shots. It's not bad thing probably other ppl could like that but I would expect more standard approach where I can just click enemy I want to attack. I fully understand what you want to achieve by mixing it, just mentioning my feelings.

Card mechanic is good, I like how you designed it. You can easily expand it to many directions.

The game has potential to be nice mix of tactic, deck builder with rich story. Cool!

Congratulations on your submission! Keep working!

Great work, top marks for this!

Yes it is fun and the story, while catchy, should have the cutscenes be skippable to add replay value.

I played all available levels, and would have played more if it was available.

Some visual glitches with rewinding time and warping to the next stage:

Hey, this is really cool. I like the story elements that are here with the cutscenes. There's clearly a lot of work gone into this. I found it quite difficult to work out where my shots where going to go, which wasnt a problem for the larger enemies, but was for those smaller ones. I don't know if having some indication on the bar where the enemy is relative to the ship could help. I also think it might help instead of having to click between ships, the game just switched you between them automatically. This bit is a bit nitpicky, but it'd be cool if you have a few more sounds, like when a characters text is coming up on screen, or when your picking a card. Cool game though.

I really like your game so far. This is a game that I will want to be playing more of. Here are some of my thoughts:

In the tutorial, when it tells you to click on any one of your ships to continue, your top ship is covered by the bars at the top and bottom.

In the tutorial, when moving Support Tank Alpha forward, the stop button is obscured by the panel with the text.

Overall the tutorial was pretty good, it gave me a feel for the combat without shoving everything at me all at once.

The mobile destroyers felt a little hard to hit with them being so early as people are still figuring out the game.

It feels a little odd that the astroids and other objects move with your ships in the flying out animation.

In the card selection screen, I wish that there was a way to turn off the zoomed popup of the card when you hover over one. It can be annoying when you are outfitting your ships.

In the second mission/set of fights, in the final fight, the final dialog, the first letter is not capitalized. It is currently "enough from you. Officers engage!"

I wish that it was more clear that you could not attack Crusher's ship from the front center when you start combat, the red beam in front of him looked like part of the ship art, not a shield. (This is being said with me not using any shield cards.)

My main combat style was using shotgun of multiple tiers, laser of multiple tiers, blast cannon, and energy recharge. Mostly I did not use the special abilities of your ships, instead I used the basic cards. So far I made it past beating Crusher, and this combat style has mostly worked for me.

It might be nice if you could use some of the credits to upgrade your ships. Example: Upgrading Support Tank Alpha's aiming difficulty.

-R

Love the changes you made to the cards, music and presentation overall. Feel like you've taken major strides in the look of the game. New cutscenes are also great. Really good job! I was playing on the web build, I did have a little bit of hitching when attacks would hit the enemies. Don't know if this is exclusive to the web build but wanted to let you know. 

This is the first time I'm leaving feedback on one of your games, so fair warning, I can get a bit into tiny details at times. I tend to give a lot of advice. Please take this as my personal preferences/opinions and do with it what you will to make your game.

The Settings button is a bit faint. On the web it is also covered by the "User Tools" links on Itch. I didn't see it until I hid those. Going into fullscreen would also show it, and I'm sure many people do sue fullscreen for the web games to deal with those links. I take notes while play, and not all fullscreen games play nicely with that, so I start without and test as I go.

It would be nice if there was BG music on the title screen.

When having volume controls it is good to have something playing so the player can adjust the volume and get feedback on their changes. BG music on the title screen would work for the music adjustment with your settings also being there. For SFX we play a short sound every time the volume is adjusted.

I do like the debug type unlocks you offer in the settings, and may try some later.

I started the tutorial, and it was also silent. I double checked my sound settings, then restarted and went into the main game, at which point I got sound. I then returned to the tutorial.

I like how you cover over elements during the tutorial to bring focus where you want it. Many will just highlight the key part while leaving everything else, but this does a good job of making it clear what the focus is.

When you start you see 3 ships, but when you get to the step that says to click on any of your ships, that blocking of other parts of the screen, is now covering up the top ship. I just see the bottom half of the text "( MOVE )". I can click on either of the others, but it did stand out to me that it says to click on any, but limits to 2 of 3. This is a bit nit-picky, but when giving jam feedback, I like to mention what I notice and leave it up to the dev to decide what to do with it.

After selecting the Assassin ship, it said to select the Basic Attack. While moving my mouse to it, I noticed that the Shotgun card also had a light-up/glow effect as I passed over the left edge of it. The basic attack had that effect, but the other 2 cards did not. The Shotgun also only had it on a small portion. At the vertical middle you have horizontal lines on either side. It only highlighted from the left edge up to the start of that line. I was able to right-click to get the info popup for the Shotgun card.

When you mouse over the cards it says to right-click to see more info. You may want to disable that text during this step of the tutorial. Your overlay seems to cover much of the card. I was able to close the card by clicking off to the side, but it lacked a clear way to close it.

The Aim Circle/Speed look to be using special font characters that may be OS specific. I am on Linux and see that your download is Windows, so I am guessing you are using a Windows system font for that display. I recommend including any fonts you use in your export, and not relying on system fonts. Looking at a screenshot, it looks like when Normal, there should be a green circle there.

When I clicked on Basic Attack I got some sound. It was a bit loud, so I adjusted my speakers, but then tried to click on the sound icon at the top right of the screen. That cause the ship to fire. It wasn't straight on, but I was lucky and it was close to center and still hit the enemy.

I like the way the sound changes to reflect how close it is to the center.

For the Move step, I think it would be nice if the "Click here" text had an arrow, as you aren't supposed to click on that text, but the Move text below it. You could even do away with the "Click here" text and just have an arrow, maybe pulsing, pointing at the button.

The Move text in the area that looks like a tab is thin, and the hover effect is fairly faint. You may want to add something more to the hover. The Move text under the ships have a glow to them, so maybe add that to the tab location as well.

I had chosen the bottom ship. I moved straight forward. The bottom edge of the ship, and the movement remaining indicator were cutoff by the tutorial text. The Stop button was also covered.

After moving I did the Basic Attack again. This time there was no sound as the indicator moved. There was sound when it fired.

For the message about gaining energy and fuel, I think you should add the word "is", making the end "its fuel is refilled".

Now that I can see the full card when right-clicking on it, I don't see a clear indicator of how to close the view. Clicking on the card itself does nothing. Clicking anywhere else, including on the text about the card, closes it. If there is no action for clicking on the card, then I would recommend closing it when clicking the card as well.

After our recent discussions about the Shotgun, I had to go with it for the Assassin. Since you said the spread was reduced, I moved straight ahead with full movement, and fired. It seemed like the spread was still reasonable, and all 3 hit the main target.

The description for Band Aid looks to be missing a space in "reverse damage".

I had moved the bottom ship mostly straight forward and stopped with the front just left of where the Move tab starts to angle down. When I went to click on the Move text below the ship, it did not respond initially. I was able to get it to react by moving the mouse up to the top third of the text. You have the tabbed Move button right there, so it is not a big issue blocking gameplay. Edit: After starting the next combat I retested this and found that even when starting I had the same issue. I'm guessing you have a Container extending edge to edge that is above the ships and blocking access to the Move button. If so, and you don't need it to pass things up, you may want to change the Mouse setting to Ignore.

I finished the tutorial. The targeting sound was intermittent as I played. I did not pay enough attention to figure out if there was a pattern. It may be the first ship each turn had it, but I cannot confirm that at the moment.

I gained 5000 Credits, and clicked the button for cards. Then I got a screen that had some header text saying "You've unlocked new abilities", with a large empty area and a next button. I waited a bit expecting something to show up in the middle area. Personally, if all that is meant to show up there is that text, I'd move it to be more vertically centered so the screen doesn't feel so empty and like there is something missing. When I clicked next it took me to what looked like the main game screen. I did not see anywhere to spend the credits or buy new cards. I'm guessing that may be related to it having been the end of the tutorial and not being able to buy anything going into the main game, but it could use with something more there to explain the situation.

I could now move between circles to select a mission. The first shows as completed, which is likely from my previous play. Moving between the missions, I can go from the first to the last with a single click. From the last, however, I can only click on the previous mission.

I like the intro. It is a good length, and gives a nice starting point for the game.

The music fits the game well. Combat feels much better having the music playing.

I started with the bottom ship. After clicking Move the bottom UI was hidden, and I acknowledged there was a fair amount of screen space down there. I decided to spread my ships out. I did think about how the UI might cover up a ship that went too far down, but wanted to try it anyway. I angled the ship down at a 45 degree angle and moved forward. It went a short distance in the direction I was aiming, and then started to slide to the right. I would prefer if the UI, or most of it, remained to show the limit of where you can go. I'm going to say that the bottom edge lines up with the larger line going across below the Move & End Turn tab-like buttons. Maybe just hide them, and the cards, but leave the lower UI outline to mark where the player can move.

Pressing the power icon brings up a Quit Game panel that looks a bit out of place. It is very bland an un-styled, like it is missing your main theme.

I'm going to be taking a break now. It is dark now and the loud festivities are starting. I'll play again later tonight or tomorrow and actually play through the main game.