In case you missed it, I did get around to playing this later on the stream! 

Streaming Amaze Me Game Jam Entries (Part 2) - YouTube

After piecing together the rules, this game is really neat. Seriously, well done! Considering playing some more when my mind isn't dull. ^.^

This is one of the more unique games I've played for the jam. Definitely a very interesting idea. As has been pointed out, the wall'o'text tutorial is bad, but you've already said that time constraints were in the way and you plan to replace it, so no problem there. I had a lot of fun rotating matrices and figuring out the best positioning in my head to give myself the biggest advantage each round. It was difficult, but not too difficult and each time I failed I kind of knew I was making a compromised choice when placing the data packet (or whatever it is, lol).

Awesome job!

Very cool turn based tactics game. It took me a few tries to start making progress, but once I did, I really enjoyed it. The concept is very cool and unique. Great game, I had a lot of fun!

Very interesting game, clever puzzle, I liked it.

I found it a bit bureaucratic to understand initially, maybe it is possible to reduce the number of buttons or steps?

Congratulations, keep up the good work

This was pretty cool! I'm a huge fan of turn-based tactics, I got real Hoplite vibes from this. I liked the mechanic of placing your own enemies, although I was able to cheese the game by blocking myself off in a corner for 6 or 7 turns, getting 20+ energy and no extra enemies, but I had a lot of fun figuring out the cheese and capitalizing on it.

I do wish there was a way to see what your enemies could do - knowing that it'll get as close to me as possible and shoot if there's LOS doesn't do too much good if I don't know how far it can move. Overall though, great job!

Wow, this is a really unique game. You must have spent a lot of time designing it. I like the potential of the gameplay and I'd love to see you improve upon it with a full release.

I think you should remove the tutorial that's a lengthy read and put in scripted levels designed to teach the player how to play the game. I'm the type of person that likes playing around with things and figuring it out so the tutorial was a big turn off for me.

You should add in keyboard controls. Honestly, it was quite inconvenient to have to move pieces using the on-screen arrows rather than wasd or the arrow keys. You could even bind the action commands to the keyboard.

When you place the server data packet, you can override the walls but it seems to move enemies onto another location if it overlaps? It's a tough design choice. I think you should just prevent any overlapping before you send the data or allow the player to move around the pieces before sending it so it doesn't overlap.

Overall, good job on the game!

Wow. You must have a brilliant mind to have come up with this - and just for this jam too! A lot of thought have gone into this as it's like creating a chess game with your very own sprites and rules in such a short time! Full of respect and admiration, man! After reading some of the previous comments and your replies, here's my thoughts, that I think may be able to help you :) :

There is definitely a learning curve for this game which is inevitable, and I would say it does take time to learn so I can see your challenge trying to convey this to the player - I myself am not v familiar the the rules of chess tbh so you can take it that I have 0 background knowledge and making reference to the rules of chess may not be 100% effective.  As such, I'd think this game can be quite advanced and complex for the average casual gamer/public (assuming this is your target audience). 

Whilst I think the detailed text explanation is helpful and important... may I suggest that instead of removing it or shortening it *too* much, instead, add some animations/gifs to show the sequence of the turn-based, what action should be done per turn, and how they (both the player and enemy) move/attack just beside where you are explaining the in the text can help with conveying this? Like one section/para can have the corresponding animation/gif beside it . This will really help with visualization and understanding.

Also, perhaps start with an easy level with maybe just one (or two different types if you feel is important for the player to know) and with prompts on what to do next (like a model answer). And break it down explicitly by steps within each turn. In this way, the player can quickly get the hang of it and be able to continue the next levels themselves independently without losing interest before that stage. You can also add this to the "How to Play" as part of the tutorial / something the player can go back to refer if needed.

Hope the above helps and all the best for your game! I like it,  its looking good! :D

My computer resolution is too high, so your text is super tiny and hard to read. I think the overall concept is really cool, once I figure out how it worked.

I don't think you need as much text if you make some simpler levels in the beginning, like do a level with just the heart and energy. Then have just one enemy.  Or you could make a video BETWEEN levels.

Music is and aesthetic is nice and simple and fits the computer vibe well. Did you make this whole concept with music and art in just these few weeks?! O-o

The puzzle system is quite complex, and I kind of suck at it, because I cannot predict the enemy pathing (plus they move multiple squares when I only move a few). 

I don't see any "bugs" so far as I can tell.  It feels pretty solid, other than maybe some balancing with health, energy, blocks, and enemies. :)

Oh what, I just discovered by the end of this post that you can rotate the packet before you send it! Haha! 

Oh what, the enemy can shoot away the blocks!

My gosh, what have you done !  A simulation or  tactic game, which are my favorite genre.  Here no visuals are important, as with pen and paper games! Hope everyone will know this fact!  The ambience, the planning, decisions, that's its spike!  Will thoroughly test it later... Congrats.

What a masterpiece! I liked a lot! In the beginning, I struggled, trying to understand well the mechanics. But once the understanding comes , then strategy begins and it becomes very fun to play and analyze! Nice choice for music as well. I'm feeling smarter now!

Clean graphics mate! It was pretty hard for me to get in to the gameplay at first , i tried 4-5 times to get a good round but died kind of often. I do however love tactics games. And after awhile i actually got pretty good at this, which did make this game feel fun :) I think that the explanations just needs some polishing to get new players into it faster :) 

Good job bro!

Okay, so obviously a wall of text will not necessarily attract players. Thankfully, your game was intuitive enough for me to figure it out on my own, and I'm glad I did, 'cause it was fun and innovative. The visuals need an upgrade: not only the sprites, but also any visual effects, transitions, animations, etc. and frankly I didn't see how neon fit into all this (apart from the title). But it was fun and it was a cool experience, well done.

I really like the design of this game. I'm finding the enemy attacks a bit punishing, and it's preventing me from getting too many levels in, but I really like how you can strategize how you want the next round of pieces positioned around you. Very innovative, and I'm definitely going to keep playing this one. Nice job!

Interesting idea, I died too many times trying to understand whats going on, I was too lazy to see the tutorial, rules are a little confusing but after sometime I understand it a bit, really nice idea and cool concept! 

Man, I really tried to understand this game but I think I'm too dumb to understand what is going on. haha. I tried reading the 'how to play' like 4 times and it just wasn't clicking. I think having a 'step-by-step' interaction tutorial would do this quite well! I'm a kinesthetic learner (like most) so reading a bunch of information does me no good. haha. That said, I did try and play it for a while. I just couldn't figure out the correlation between the data packet to send and the arena. 

On another note, the graphics and overall polish are quite nice! It has a great neon feel to it! Everything was very well done, and from what I can tell it fits well within the tactical RTS genre amazingly!

Just as a note, I've never been able to wrap my head around tactical RTS-type games so don't take my experience with too much weight. haha. Good job though! Very smooth execution! :D

Really cool tactical game, I really like the overall concept! I'm not really good at these sorts of games, but I had fun trying to figure out the strategy. I died a lot, but had fun! Well done!

Interesting premise! It would be cool to see a "tutorial" level to start with if you decide to work on a more polished version in the future.