Hello!

I tried the tutorial first and got stuck at some point because I couldn't understand nor execute the instruction that was give. Something about hover a building for resource, if I remember correctly. Maybe a little highlight or something would be nice? As it was stated in another comment, I couldn't go back to the main menu from the tutorial and pressed ESC, which closed the game.

Now about ESC, I'm so used to it to access menu/options/closing windows that I pressed it multiple times while trying out the game, hence exiting the game accidentaly and losing my progression lol. I gave up after my fifth mistake, because knowing me, I could do it a sixth time and so on and never learn.

While trying to start a new game, it was written chose a faction but I couldn't chose any, I guess it's because it's still on development, or did I miss something? You can play with 1, 2, 3 etc factions... If you chose one, does that mean you're alone on the map? Or is it the number of enemy factions?

Probably because I had to skip the tutorial since I was stuck in it, I didn't completely what I had to do in game. I met another faction but I couldn't fight them because I didn't have the right weapons, but they didn't attack me either, so I guess we were cool? I mean I'm in for peace in an apocalyptic world, I was just surprised probably because I watched Mad Max too much ;p

Besides that, I made camps and looted stuff that I equiped to my units, didn't do much more as far as I went. I found sometimes the number of moves a unit could do confusing, because I had still 1 left and couldn't move. I suppose something was preventing me from moving but I don't think I saw anything explaining me so. Maybe info bubbles when you are trying to move and you're stuck would help.

That's all I can say for the gameplay ^^'

I liked the graphisms overall and the old game vibe they give, I think they also work well for the atmosphere. I found the SFX a little weird, like the sound unit makes when they appear. Apparently one of my teammate didn't like the clicking sound but I didn't mind at all so... The background music works fine with the vibe of the game, didn't play enough to know if it looped of changed at some point or depending of events, but it would be a nice addition I think.

I hope despite the little depth of my playthrough the comment will help. Good luck for the game dev!

Once I figured out how the game worked I started to have a lot of fun with it. I will have to come back and try different factions and difficulty settings. I still had to figure a lot of stuff out through trial and error even after the tutorial. There is a lot of depth here and different options but that isn't always clear right away. I did like the feel and strategy of the game, good job!

Escape is often used for accessing menus, pausing, and exiting/cancelling from a screen. It was unexpected when it closed the game completely.

It would be nice if the game had an in-game option to not be in fullscreen. I used my OS controls to exit fullscreen.

I started with the tutorial. I started the game from the terminal, and when the tutorial started there were a lot of errors about tiles.

There does not seem to be a way to return to the main menu from the tutorial select screen. Once in the tutorial there doesn't seem to be a menu or other way to do so either. Pressing Escape ends the game, so I can restart, but a way to return to the menu would be nice.

I'm just starting out, so my opinions may change on things later, but there are some things about the UI that stand out to me. The button text seems positioned oddly high. It looks to be touching the top of the button with a lot of space below it. I would recommend adding a top margin or centering the text vertically. Generally it is good not to have text touching an edge.

In the top section, it feels like there is a lot of empty space. This especially stands out with the small font size for the lower row of information. Maybe more will get added later, but if not, I'd like to see the text increase in size a bit. If you want to keep the top row larger than the lower, then it feels like there is plenty of space to increase both slightly. The lower text feels too small for the UI, at least to me.

I think the tutorial instructions could use with being positioned a bit higher/further from the character. It told me to move. When I did so, some text appeared about finding someone, but I couldn't read it clearly, as it was behind the tutorial text telling me to click next turn. When the turn ended additional text showed here as well and was heard to read.

It would be nice if the tutorial had some kind of indicators when it told you to look at or interact with a UI element. This could be a glow or pulsing effect around the area, or an arrow pointing towards it. When first getting started I don't know where everything is, so an arrow from the tutorial box pointing towards the bottom right for the next turn button would help to find things faster.

After clicking next turn it tells you to hover the population resource. This is not clear. I started by looking for resources on the map, before looking around and seeing the text for it in the top bar. The small font size stood out when looking for it. Hovering the did advance the tutorial. The tutorial text change was fast and quiet, and I did not initially acknowledge it had changed as I was looking at the Population info. It might help to add something to indicate a change. After finishing with the population it does make sense to go back to the tutorial text, so this may not be needed. The tutorial text also covers up part of the popups when hovering, so maybe instead of moving it up, it should go lower down to not interfere with this part of the tutorial.

I'm at the step where the tutorial says to open the Equipment tab by having a unit and pressing the equipment. I have a unit selected and when I click on the Equipment in the bottom center box I get messages to the terminal, but nothing seems to happen in game. I clicked on the Inventory button and that advanced the tutorial.

I decided to not go back and do the next tutorial, but see what the main game was like.

The "Choose a faction!" text feels like it should be larger, bolder, underlined, or otherwise look more like a title/header. That whole left side with the equal spacing and sizing feels off. Obviously it is in an early state, but this is my first time playing, and it stood out to me. Bikers seems to have the flavor text and their special feature reversed in positioning.

Starting the game I clicked around. The Victories screen was hard to understand at first. The UI could use with some better grouping of what goes together, such as a horizontal line between the different victory conditions, or having the condition name centered on a line on its own as the separator.

I've collected several items. I have what looks like 3 pieces of clothing and a bow. When I hover over them, one of the shirts says it is a bow, while the bow says it is a sniper rifle. Both have the same stats. Equipping the clothes that say they are a bow changes the unit's Weapon line from red to green, but the text says "None".

Each unit only has 2 red icon slots below the unit for equipment, and as you choose to give them new equipment the icons update to show the 2 latest ones, rather than having dedicated slots for specific types of equipment, which is odd.

With the unit limit of 5 before new survivors found create new units, you can quickly get a lot of units to control. It would be nice if there was a quick way to see them all, along with how much movement they had left, and cycle through them.

Sometimes pressing Next Turn does not seem to end my turn but moves me to another unit. There should be more feedback on this. I thought I had gone through and made sure everyone had used all their movement, which is what I thought might have caused it before. Maybe I missed something, and the unit did still have something they could do. If that is the case, then maybe add an indicator next to the Next Turn button to show when everyone has moved/the turn is ready to be ended.

I founded a settlement/camp. Several messages all came up together at turn start and faded before I could read them. It would be nice to have a log of messages so you can go back and read any you missed.

I took a look at the tech screen and did some research. I'm going to wrap up my playthrough here.

You have a decent start. I would recommend putting some time into UI, as that was an area that lessened my enjoyment of the game. There is a lot to manage, so you need a good UI to make it not be a hassle.

I only played on the default settings with 1 faction. I saw them once early on, and did not fight them. Then I just moved around collecting things and equipping them. Eventually I built a camp. The game looks like it has potential, but as it is, did not really draw me in. I do enjoy 4x games, so will keep an eye on it in future jams to see how it progresses.

First of all, I have to say that you’ve done a great job on your thumbnail, it was very catchy and I knew I was gonna play this game. It has a gritty feel to it which shows the atmosphere of this game well.

Tutorial

I started with the basic tutorial and ran into a bug where I kind of got locked. It wasn’t progressing forward. I restarted the game and that fixed the issue. Esc button straight up close the game. confirmation window would be nice that asks if you want to go to the main menu instead or quit. I completed the first and went to the second tutorial, here I could not figure out how to demolish a building. I tried every button I could. I am sure I missed something somewhere.

Main Game

I chose the party faction because I like the mechanic of lose your strong unit, lose the game. I set up a settlement and the game was progressing well, found currency and so on. Also saw some scary enemy unit, like tanks and stuff. Very cool! Found a cool horse as well.

Positives

• The atmosphere is pretty nice
• The sound design is also great!
• I can definitely see this project getting bigger and more complex.
• The gameplay loop was enjoyable

Points for improvement

• The tutorial can definitely see some work.
• Some parts of UI were a bit janky without borders and so on.
• The units were not very distinct against the landscape, they kind of just blend in, which is not what we want for units. maybe a distinct border? Or a sharper color contrast?

I will definitely be giving it a replay and following the progress of the game.

Great job! Excited to see what you do next.

Genuinely, well done! Really interesting idea and it's fun, I'd love to see this develop further and further. Following you so I can see how this turns out - my only gripe is that it's a little indistinct in terms of colouring (i.e. it can be a bit hard to tell apart different bits like resources, where my units are, and so on) from the background, but it's excellent in concept, and I think quite satisfying to play in general.

I really like turn-based strategy games like the Civilization series, but your game has such a good feel. The desolate atmosphere is executed so well, and it gives off a survival vibe as well. Now, I would like to point out a few things about your game:

1- When I was playing the game, I tried to climb a hill on the map, but since I was on foot, I couldn't climb it. This wouldn't be an issue, but since I still had available moves, I thought it was a bug. It would be better to add a message for these situations.

2- The inventory icons are not very beautiful yet. But since your game is still in development, it isn't important right now anyway.

3- The music gets a little bit repetitive after a while, but it matches the atmosphere of the game.

Despite all this, this is an interesting turn-based game. I like it!

I really enjoyed playing Charcoal. I started with the tutorial and started playing once I got the city building understood. I started a fresh game and played for about 2 hours until a storm hit and knocked out the power.  This game reminds me of an old zombie web based game I used to play. It's not around anymore but, man this was fun. Please keep working on this!!

Edit: I tried to play this in Linux but, it wouldn't let me run it so I just downloaded the windows version and ran it under WINE. I think we may have had opposite problems with our uploads. I didn't see a .PCK file in the Linux version and that may have been why I couldn't run it.