It took me quite awhile to get the hang of the game. It is quite a complicated game, but quite interesting once you manage to get the hang of it. The art looks great, music and sound effects are all pretty nice! The amount of mechanics and content is so much for a 2 week game, but the lack of a tutorial will put players off due to it’s complexity.
I hopped into the game blind without reading anything, and was completely confused of what to do. I was still wondering if I was in the correct game, as I thought of claymore as a sword and the game being about fighting, but rather I was faced with electronic circuit puzzles.
I died quite a number of times at the start just figuring out how to play the game, but once I understood the game, it seemed too easy. The game is very unforgiving when you build, not giving any energy back on selling/trashing placed objects, not even if you accidentally misplace a wire. But the amount of energy that it gives per round is too much, which leads to the first 1-2 days being absolutely horrible, as you’re struggling to get energy. But subsequent days like day 5 onwards being so easy I could just click the play button without changing anything.
The game also needs some indicators, to show that moving things around actually costs energy, and that selling/trashing nets you nothing. As with the current game, it’s better to place new things down than moving/trashing them, as you gain nothing (other than space) from doing so.
I bought the XL generator for both Attack and Agility/Speed on day 3 due to the massive amount of energy given, and basically didn’t need to touch it at all until around day 11. The only things I needed to keep track of was the number of Defense nodes, and the exact value of Healing (which can be cheesed using incrementors). On day 12, I needed to increase my value for Attack, so I simply bought another XL generator, combined both powers and just continued to AFK. I was sitting with over 10k energy on Day 17, with my Attack, Def and Agility values way over the required amount, only really needing to double check my Healing and Def node count.
As such, the game seems boring the longer it goes, as you’re just building more without any challenge past the first few days.
The early game also seems luck based, as at certain times, I roll a number higher than 10 in Attack, which requires me to get a better generator or incrementors, while sometimes I roll a 9 and not have to bother.
There are also quite a number of typos which can easily be fixed later on, such as “became you new user” in the intro scene. The ability for a player to choose their name if they want to would also be great.
The game is a really great puzzle game, and has so many mechanics that it feels a little overwhelming to begin with. But I don’t see much relevance to the word Claymore, as other than the artwork, which actually looks more like a Machete or Falchion rather than a Claymore, it doesn’t seem to have a link.
I can see that you put in a lot of work into the game, considering the massive amount of building types and mechanics you implemented, but I feel some polishing and tweaks would do well so that players can enjoy the mechanics you spent so much time on implementing. A great prototype for a 2 week game jam!