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Playability
- It's not really clear why I can't move in certain directions.
- Not sure how the bug occurred, but the enemies stopped moving and attacking and wont die.
- It gets very tedious to do everything with the mouse. I would recommend introducing some keyboard inputs as shortcuts for movement or selecting abilities.
Theme Implementation
- The mechanics and the premise are very on theme. Earning money so that you can retire, so true bestie.
Cleverness
- Not clear what the capabilities of each enemy are, nor what they want. It seems like they really dont care to chase you. There could be some level of challenge to this game if the mobs actually decided to work together, but as it stands they simply patrol and I have to chase them down with my melee move.
- At a certain point, collecting permanent genes out-weighs any of the interest in using temporary pickups. They were reliable and I could figure out over time what they actually did, in what pattern.
- It seems like most of the strategy is finding the right combination to chain together to hit one particular tile with 3 different attacks at once to maximize damage. Unfortunately the strategy doesn't evolve much more than that! Try area denial, status effect, persistent area effects, etc. You mentioned Noita, the best part of Noita is actually the fact that every pixel can be destroyed/altered!
- Introduce bonus objectives! Maybe you get more rewards if you finish a level within a certain time frame, if you triple kill, if you pick up a heavily guarded item, etc. The best encounters in DnD often have a side objective or a clock of some kind.
- Speed is too powerful of a stat to simply give out.
Artistic Style
- I will always call people out for using Unity's default font Arial. Font contributes a lot to aesthetic, don't ignore it!
- There needs to be some sort of fanfare on level completion. It's a bit jarring to
- The UI needs to show the range/aoe of the ability you have selected. I don't know what anything does.
- The UI needs to reflect that you can select multiple abilities and only a max of 3 at a time. Grey them out, have them load into a silo like in Transistor (Supergiant Games), etc.
- It would be nice to see each enemy move one after the other. In Into the Breach, enemies are labeled with their order, and their animations play one after another
- I like the animations of the spells and the art overall. I'd recommend browsing Saint11's pixel art tutorials if you want to take your pixel art to the next level! When the elements on screen are so small, special considerations need to be made for keeping things clear and clean but also visually interesting.
I know trying to do extra stuff in college is tough, I've been there. Great job making this in 2 weeks. If there's just one takeaway I hope you get from this critique it's that you should more closely examine the role of a game mechanic in the games that you enjoy and reference. Into the Breach isn't just about tile-based combat like a tactical RPG, it's about optimizing the limited actions that you have in order to protect objectives that are constantly under attack. Shotgun King soul cards aren't temporary, they're build defining and if you combine them just right you can make a really cracked build. And in Noita, chaining spells doesn't just fire them off one after the other, if you're careful with your combination you can make a truly devastating wand as the spell effects compound. In your next game project, I encourage you to drill down deep into a single game mechanic and flesh it out as much as you can, build your game around it. Good luck and thank you for participating!
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