Wow, seriously one of the best games of the jam! The presentation was perfect (pretty much release-level), and the way the depth of the mechanics revealed itself as the game commenced was awesome. It was certainly complex, which made it gratifying to make it to the end.

One thing I'll note is that some of the balancing for the different weapon types could use some improvement; I ended my run with all "SHOT" metals, as its low-cost firing and special ability were incredibly useful against the hordes of monsters. Rebalancing may also give me a bit more incentive to switch between modes with my units.

Still, I had a ton of fun with this one, and was surprised with just how much time I spent playing it. I hope this one does well. Excellent work!

I had seen your game floating around and was excited to finally get around to playing it. Very cool concept. Plays like Into the Breach combined with tower defense. I find this game really interesting and I hope you don’t mind me spilling my thoughts (feel free to ignore, honestly!). I’ll try to avoid any comments that have been made already.

I discovered the KING glitch on accident, then started fresh and beat the game using only SHOTs, then played and beat again without using any SHOTs.

The whole idea of modes for metals is interesting, but I found myself almost never switching modes. I’d say a big reason is the 3-turn lock; imo staying in one mode and focusing on its playstyle is simply easier than the hassle of switching modes only to regret it a turn or two later.

Being able to explore/uncover the map was really neat. From a visual standpoint, I think there should be a clearer change in what a tile looks like before and after it’s been “uncovered.” Also, once you’ve sent a metal into the depths of one maze-like branch and defeated the hives there, it feels useless and just sits there (unless you feel like wasting a bunch of movement grit). I really liked that units like the ROOK can only push one unit into the darkness but can move back into known territory two spaces. Helps combat that issue a bit. Otherwise maybe being able to scrap a metal for resources could be useful?

Healing seems to have very little use since enemies don’t attack metals off the track (except for the flying guys). It makes me wonder why the ROOK is the only metal with self-healing, yet it comes with the most HP—I cannot imagine a scenario in which I’d need to use it.

I found the flying enemies to be very overpowered, at least compared to the metals’ abilities. Travels over barriers and heads straight for the base, moves multiple spaces, and damages metals in its path.

There’s some info that’s always shown that could probably be hidden. In my experience a small amount of the game is spent launching metals, so I don’t know if the UI for launching them needs to be on-screen for the entire game. I’m not sure why the launch cost for metals is shown on the upgrade page, considering it’s already been launched. On the topic of upgrades, I only found myself needing to upgrade damage. Any other metal upgrades (especially upgrades to special abilities) seemed expensive for little reward. Dice upgrades also seemed too expensive for the return on investment.

Again, I love the game mechanics and concept. The entire aesthetic is excellent. I am super envious of your choices for SFX and music (thank you for introducing me to Ruskerdax!). I bet you have a lot of interesting ideas up your sleeve and look forward to seeing your game develop.

Impressive submission! Core mechanics are very fleshed out and everything is so deep it feels like something thats been maturing and in development for way longer than just two weeks. Perhaps a bit too much to take in in the beginning, but I learnt everything eventually just by playing. As others have said previously the tutorial could be better, but the mechanics definitely seem a lot more understandable in hindsight, so the core game itself is pretty much solid.

took world’s longest time to do so, but i finally figured out the game! yay! i think my main issue with learning it was that i didn’t realize i could attack the bugs themselves - i thought i was only able to attack the hives. i was under the impression the little yellow guys were unstoppable once they were spawned! ^^” once i learned that, it really opened up the game for me. it was a lot of fun! making EVERY SINGLE THING in the game use the same four resources is a really clever idea, it forces you to think super hard about how you use them, and i love that! i do wish that there was more of an incentive to use units other than the basic SHOT, but i’m really happy to see that you’ll be working on it more. i’m so excited to play this with even more of a planned-out strategy!!! looking forward to it!

A very well polished and nice looking game. The gameplay loop was also satisfying. Only difficult part is getting the hang of it initially.

I got my ass kicked so much, and I loved every second of it.

Such a creative idea with a lot of potential, I'd love to see a full version of this!

I can see myself playing a lot more of this one. Big fan of Into the Breach, the additional upgrades and dice elements work really well. Can be pretty tough though. Some small bugs like the King ruining my energy stat every time it attacks. Also if there's any indicator of how many hits the base can take, I couldn't find it.

Oh man this is so complex my brain is actually brain not :"D Reminds me a lot of Advance Wars/Wargroove.

I'm actually enjoying it though! In the beginning it took me a bit to understand the mechanics properly, but once I got the gist it's pretty easy to go. The UI is really tidy and I love the sound effects. The dice is giving me a lot of joy whenever I click on them.

This is very good and I might give it more play later. So far I think the only dice that's almost useless to upgrade is the one with lightning? I might have missed something, but everything else have other use other than for unit launch.

Big props to you for this making a game this complex under the jam, really.

Lordy I can't fathom how you got all this done in the time allotted. Feels super complex and satisfying and balanced. Really great music to fit the theme and interesting graphics with great contrast. Great job!

That was pretty great,I would've just liked a bit more of threat towards the end

I like the art and the music+sounds fit really well

Didn't think upgrading dice was nearly as good as getting another 3 for the same price, but rolling feels so satisfying 

also it can be a bit hard to tell if you missed a tile while exploring

This game was very fun. First run I got wrecked but the second time I cleared it. The difficulty and complexity were perfect. Buying additional dice and upgrading your dice and metals was really fun and satisfying, especially upgrading and buying more income dice. All of the interactions and sounds were very meaty and satisfying - I particularly enjoyed rolling the dice. Great job!

Managed to clear /win the game in my 3rd try. My strategy was focusing on getting as many dice rolls as possible for attacking and moving. Worked out in a battle of attrition lol. The gameplay is very fun once you figure out how to play. The balance between using resources for movement/attacking/launching new units is very interesting.

Really cool execution. Hope you can make this into a fully fledged game! Has a lot of potential! Great Job on the gameplay and the overall presentation!

You get a little too much information thrown at you which makes it hard to discern what's important and what isn't. The games seems incredibly complex, and insanely polished. Very impressed!

For feedback, I don't have much to add that other people haven't already said, regarding the info/tutorial/start of the game. After learning though the game was quite fun! And of course the visuals/audio are immaculate. Seriously impressive amount of polish, just a bit of gameplay tweaking and I could see this in a store. Nice job on this game!

Like other mentioned, I really enjoyed the presentation, but I think the tutorial is a bit lacking. In a game with this level of complexity, you really need to focus on making sure your player will understand the systems involved, and how to properly apply them. Obviously in the setting of a game jam, its hard to have enough time to both make a full featured game, and properly explain to the players, but in the future I hope you'll continue with it and flesh it out more, because the visual and audio experience feel very good already. Great work!

Honestly incredible presentation, one of the best in the roster for sure! I could see myself playing this for hours with a full release, and especially with a good story.  With better conveyance of the mechanics (which really aren't that hard once you get the hang of them!) this game could really hook a lot of people in. 

I would still be playing this if I didn't have other mode games to get to! Balancing was of course an issue, but even after pigeonholing myself into simple units, I was having a blast. We just need to usher in the Age of Frogs. >:)

The presentation was really polished, the audio feedback on input, and the graphics were great. It took me some time to get it but the mechanics were fun too

Amazing idea and presentation, everything is really satisfying. It took a while to learn but once I figured it out I wanted to keep playing. I came across a bug that one of my tanks was spending energy with its regular attack  so my energy (the lighting bolt icon) was in the negatives.

The presentation and sound effects were very very clean. I think the gameplay had a lot of features and was a bit overwhelming but the tutorial helped a lot with that. Great Jam! Post jam I agree with a lot of comments here that the game could use a bit of balancing, but balancing any strategy/turn based game in a few weeks is basically impossible.