I like the look of the Settings screen. The colors and icons work well overall. One I think could use some work is the difficulty. The text touches the left side and could use some padding. The popup is also using the default grey blocky theme. I know those can be a pain to theme with all the pieces that are not clearly named as being part of it. It would also be nice if there were tooltips when hovering/focusing a control. I think the main one people will want to know about is Performance Mode. What does enabling that do? Will it disable certain effects? That kind of info would be nice for players to know, though if they are having issues enough to enable it, I suppose they will find out.
I'm looking through the various screens before starting. It is nice to have music on all of them now. Some can still be a bit slow to pick up and initially sound silent, but it doesn't take long to hear something. There is still a bit of difference in the volumes of the various pieces and throughout the pieces, so I did find myself adjusting my speakers volume at several points.
Looking at the new cards, Meteor Shower says that it "Auto-targets closest ally.", which doesn't sound like where you want to aim for a powerful attack, even if it is going to be largely random across the screen.
I'm going through the tutorial. I like the improvements so far. I'm at the ship select step and while I can hover over Valkyrie to get the name to show, and hovering over the top tutorial text shows a targeting line from the hidden Oyster, I cannot click to select them. Some of the Morningstar details (name, and state icons) are hidden, so maybe give a little more space above for them to show when hovering to give new players the association of hover to see the details.
I'm on the move step and it says to "Click on Move" with an arrow, but clicking on it does nothing. Morningstar does still have the selection circle around it. I clicked again and still could not use the Move button in the bottom UI. It looks disabled and is also not reacting to hover. The Move button by the ship works fine, but that is not where the player is being directed.
After moving a bit I tried to click the Stop buttons, and neither worked. Both rotated the ship towards where I was clicking. I used space to proceed.
After being free to take the rest of the turn the lower UI Move button did work.
I turned on the WASD controls when it popped up and don't really like them. If you can enable them in the tutorial, there should remain a way to turn them off after experimenting. I did click back from typing things, so maybe if I was following along I could have used them and then toggled it back off, but I'm not sure on that. Ideally you may want something to confirm which controls the player wants after trying the alternative. I am not a fan of WASD controls after using the Tank controls for so long. I ended up using double click instead of keyboard for the rest of the fight.
I like the tutorial for the new card select screen. After it closed I felt that the "Previous" button was out of place. It covers part of one of the card slots, and does make slotting a card there more difficult.
I like the 5,000 Credits to spend on cards. It makes those first decisions much easier.
While the new UI works, and is much nicer for being able to lay out the cards as they will be in combat, it feels so odd. It also is a bit annoying only being able to fully see one card due to the bottom UI overlay. I understand it and it works for what this is meant to do, but I also like to see lots of data all at once for speed processing.
I completed selecting things and setup my ships. Then I clicked on "Press Space To Continue", and it reloaded the Ability Select Tutorial. There is no Next button or other instructions to proceed. I don't see how to proceed other than Quit to Menu, which is what I did. I kept my cards, so it is not a big deal for me, but would likely confuse players, especially those who haven't noticed that button yet.
Starting on the Rion mission I had Story Dialogues off, but still got the story showing. Pressing E and clicking got me through it quickly enough, but it did show. I went back to the menu and verified that I had it off. Then I decided to go do Phantom instead.
I used Energy Infusion and then could not click on Move under the target ship. I could still see the line between the ships, so it likely was interfering with the button. The other move button worked fine. Even as the end fly away scene was showing, the line was still visible, along with a circle around where the other ship had been.
Minor thing, but it might be nice to be able to use the scroll wheel to move through the mission select. Being down at Phantom and moving back up to Rion with click and wait had me thinking about it.
Experimenting with the new cards, I did not expect the Void Bullet to also destroy the attacking ship. I can see why it would, being a black hole, but the card does not make that clear. I'm not a fan of suicide attacks, so won't be using it again.
This also lead me to acknowledge that the Practice Mode does not have an option to revive your ships. It would be nice to not need to bring Godrin's Ring for testing some of these cards, and instead have a revive button. I tried Reset Everything as well and was surprised when it did not reset the dead ship to alive. That and/or repair reviving would be nice.
I saw the video showing off Meteor Shower, so I'm not surprised, but I took as much damage as the enemies and I can't see myself using that in a real combat.
Anachronium Wave certainly sounds powerful, though I have not played through to use it in areal combat and I'd really have to debate the cost. And extra turn is always nice, but it is a later game card and would depend on having a high enough max and energy gain.
Saul Over is a neat idea, but it would depend on knowing the enemy HP levels. It does a fair amount of damage, but there are other cards that cost less that do as much or more. Being able to also grant you an extra ship, in addition to damage is nice. Essentially being 1 extra energy cost beyond Saul Kay to do damage and get a ship, though needing aim and an enemy without too much HP, the cost feels decent, if you have enough of a max to use it.
For Steam worthiness, I'd say the game still needs some polish, but is in pretty good shape and a demo or playtest once approved would be good. Steam API integration, with Steam Achievements would be a good addition for Steam, but can come later. We are using GodotSteam by Gramps from the Asset Store.