Hey, I like the updates you have been doing over the past month, They really add to the feel of the game. The game is shaping up quite nicely.
I'm still getting used to the name change. I preferred it as Anachronium, but understand why you changed the name.
Open Notes:
I am going into this without looking at the devlogs, just to get a blind feel for how things have changed.
I am starting with the tutorial this run.
I really like the new sprites for your ships. They look good.
I like the UI updates, they help it feel more polished.
On the tutorial, on the move step, clicking on the button in the bottom UI did not give any result, I needed to click on the button below the ship.
I beat the tutorial on my second turn and got the final popup, however the end-of-combat scene showed up and the popup flew off screen before I could fully read it.
In the card select screen tutorial, after you finish it, the previous button is still there and if you click the button that you normally would to enter a combat, it will re-start the tutorial.
I feel like the early enemies have a too high miss rate. I went through the first mission without taking a single point of damage because the enemies kept missing with every single shot they fired. Edit: Reading some of your devlogs, and looking at my settings, it looks like I am on easy mode. I did not seem to get any other buffs from that, so I am wondering if it being listed as easy mode is a bug? I did not touch my settings at all this run until checking the difficulty. I am setting my difficulty to Medium, and may later play again and see what is different. Edit: Playing again at Medium, I would say that I was on easy before. I did not have Sniper's Dream on any of my ships when on easy mode.
Looking at your screenshots, it looks like they are all old. You may want to get some new screenshots because of how much the game's look and stats have changed. The one that, in my opinion, should get updated the most is the one that shows Anachroniser, that is several versions old, and does not actually reflect how the page looks, several of the energy values on the cards are incorrect, and several have been added to that tab since the screenshot. (Sorry if this section feels a bit ranty and as though I dislike your screenshots. I am trying to explain why I am thinking that they should be updated, but I could see it coming across aggressively.)
Being able to move my ships around before a combat is sooo nice. One note I have on this is, I feel like the boxes around your ships are a little large, I found myself bumping into the box around the ship that I was trying to get next to quite a bit.
It would be nice if the practice mode had an option to revive player ships and one to revive enemy ships.
It is a bit odd that the Shotgun card "Barrage Shotgun" has red shots, even though all of the other shotguns have blue shots.
Meteor Shower is listed as "Auto-targets closest ally.", that feels a bit odd considering it does not seem to have a target. Maybe instead "Targets Nobody", or something like that.
I feel like the Feather Striker enemies are a bit too powerful, especially when they have a Heal Bot in the same fight. I had a fight where two Feather Strikers and a Heal Bot took out my full HP ships in one turn. The Feather Strikers did Crit Remorse Flower, and the Heal bot did a Crit basic attack, finishing off Valkyrie. That felt bad, because there was no indication that something like that was going to happen, at that point I was doing very well and destroying most fights, but then that one fight took me out in one turn. On a similar note, I feel like the combat with Mobile Destroyers and Energy Crusaders has a similar issue with the fact that on the second turn the Energy Crusaders will Overcharge the Mobile Destroyers and then the Mobile Destroyers will use Fibonacci Strike, which is an almost sure loss of ships.
Okay, playing more with Intoxicated Gremlins, on Kunai, WOW! How did I not try this out more. It is now a large part of my strategy with Kunai. Thank you for recommending it, and making me think to try it more, cause that makes Kunai's attack so much more powerful. Thinking on that card more, I think that part of why it is so powerful is because of how tight the arc on Kunai is, using the gremlins card increases the crit area by a proportionally larger area compared to other ships, and so even if you are not perfect on your aim, you are more likely to get a crit.
Some notes on the settings:
I like the look of the Settings screen. The colors, icons, and overall theming looks good.
The popup of the Difficulty option is using the default godot grey theme which looks bad compared to everything else.
It would be nice if there were tooltips when hovering/focusing a control.
What does Performance Mode mean? I did not play around with it yet, but it is not clear to me what it will do to the game/gameplay. Tooltips would help with this.
I think that you way want a option for the galaxies in the background in combat.
Settings Notes End.
When you try to buy a ship, the buy ship button lists it as 100K, which is the cost, but the popup say that it will cost 200K.
In Arcania S's ship select stats it lists energy production as 0 but in one of your devlogs, you say that you increased the starting energy production. I have not bought the ship, so I cannot say which way it is. I think that having Arcania starting with one energy production is a good choice.
Requested Feedback/Comments for Reviewers:
Would love feedback on the newer abilities. Note that they are only accessible using "unlock all cards" from the settings:
I like the new abilities. One note I do have on the Void Bullet, it does not seem to mention that it will destroy the ship that fires the bullet. You might want to mention that it destroys the attacking ship.
I did not use Meteor Shower much at all, since I seem to have terrible luck with that type of random ability. The one time I did use it, in the practice mode, it did a lot more damage to my ships than it did to the enemies.
Saul Over is a cool idea, though I doubt that I would use it in-game because of how I do my fights, and the fact that I still prefer Valkyrie to Arcania because Valkyrie has a starting 2 energy gain, which allows me to attack quickly, without worrying about whether I have lost enough HP on Arcania to gain 2 or more energy. I might play around with this ability in the battle mode, if I get an upgrade that increases one of my ship's energy max to 6 or higher.
- New Ability select screen:
I like it. I really like both being able to move your ships around and decide what configuration they will be in, and I like being able to test out what your new abilities look like.
- Steam worthiness in its current state:
I am not the best judge of this, but I think that it is absolutely something that could work on Steam, as long as you are able to do the right marketing to get noticed. Reading Dragon's section on this, I would agree with what they say.
- Weakest part of the game and the best:
I'm not really sure on the weakest part of the game. Maybe the tutorial? I would say the best part is the combat, managing your energy, and strategizing how to take enemies out is really fun, and overall feels well balanced.
- What sets this game apart from other games:
I have not seen any games that have this combination of story, deckbuilding, strategy, and the general theme before. I would say that the way that you combine these factors, sets your game apart from others that have some similar themes or concepts. I am not that great at explaining things like this so, sorry if it isn't clear what I mean.
- What are the four things that you consider to be a part of the game loop:
I am not fully sure I understand what this means, so I will answer with what I think that it means.
If I were to boil the game loop down to four things I think that they would be:
Combat, Deckbuild (Gain more cards so that you can get further.), Prep for next combat (sort of like Deckbuild but more focused on things like healing, and moving your ships around based on your cards.), and Story,
Telrym Draconis is going to be mentioning some typos, so I am not listing them.
That is all for now, the updates that you have made over the past month have really helped the feel of the game, in my opinion.
-R (Yep, -R from DIS Kids. After this jam, unless I cannot use this account, I will no longer be doing the -R at the end of my reviews because I have a separate account from the base DIS Kids.)