Oops, I missed this last week! I played the game today and really enjoyed it, though there are a few problems of varying severity. I think the best way for me to explain might be in bullet point form! Tbh this kind of game is not really one I give a lot of thought to the design of, so my suggestions might be way off.
Minor Problems/Bugs
- The MacOS build doesn't appear to be packaged correctly. It is a zip file containing the contents of an application package. However, you can run the main executable and it works fine, just a bit weird.
- There is no scaling applied, or obvious way to resize the game. This means I'm squinting at a tiny box in the centre of my screen.
- In the introductory battle some of the sprites were flickering and stuff, and sometimes disappearing altogether depending on where the camera was focused. This didn't seem to occur in subsequent battles.
Gameplay Problems
- The main problem in my mind is that there is really no challenge or strategy involved in the map/world view - you can just keep clicking and waiting until you've built everything up to the max, have money pouring in each turn and a full roster of level 5 soldiers, then steamroll over the next territory. The last battle was laughably easy for me. Having some threat of attack, needing to keep territories defended, something more required for upgrades than just money and clicking, those sorts of things, might round out this side of the game.
- The battle arenas were a bit small, and nothing about them really added much, tactically. Only the first one was larger than a single screen. Having a lead in to battles, multiple smaller engagements, chokepoints to defend or attack, things like that might add some depth.
What I Liked
- I really liked the way the attacking worked, requiring some degree of skill on the player's part to determine damage/crits rather than just using an RNG, I thought it made it more engaging.
- I thought the counterattacking, and the way it suggested which types of units to use for what, was really cool.
- The story was really great, and the way the dialogues were presented, with the target of a line of dialogue semi transparent, was really good.
- The art was really good, both the main game art and the full size character art for the dialogues.
- The music was really great, although the battle music felt a little bit repetitive after a while. A transition to some victory music would be a nice addition, it feels a bit anti-climactic at the moment to win and have the battle music just keep going.
Overall I really enjoyed this game and I hope the overarching strategy side of it in particular gets fleshed out a little more.