Saw this game getting a lot of hype, but it's a bit disappointing in my opinion. Got very excited when I started it, since the game looks very cool, but the mechanics ended up being very simple. For this kind of art style I would've expected the devs to have made it themselves, but everything is free assets as listed (which is perfectly fine if you had impressive mechanics). All you do is run around and click to fight off the enemies. It is cool that if the dam wall breaks, the water flows out - that's impressive, but then there was no harvest animation or indication added when you are cutting down trees. The NPC in the top right also just feels a bit out of place. Just lacking refinement and uniqueness in my opinion. Adding more of a building mechanic, getting spells to turn orcs against each other, any other defense strategy would've made it a bit more unique.
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The art style may be simple but that doesn't mean it's easy to make considering all the directions and animations. Some of the sprites and animations we did make for example: the sword swing area animation, the arrow, and the sword sprites. We only had two weeks and with no previous game dev experience we added what we believed to be the most important parts to achieve a "complete game/foundation" without spending too much time on intricate details. We agree with most of the points you brought up but considering our experience we are proud of what we made.
You guys should be proud, especially for a first game. It's just some constructive criticism since the asset link that was provided shows all of the directional animations, so given that, spending a bit more time on some more intricate details would've resulted in a more impressive complete game. It definitely has really great and creative potential and you guys should keep at it! :)