itch.io

Here comes a rather comprehensive review written partly on the fly. :) (I would restructure it if I had more time; sorry for it being a bit messy!)

Observations:

1. Oh, very nice that you put sliders for the volumes! :D Not that common a feature; I had thought about adding them for some game jam games, and I was always afraid this would take too much time.
2. I like the title screen music, which I see you made yourselves. The background, font and buttons are pretty, too! I just think the ‘effects’ word from ‘Sound effects’ would be better inside the panel (using a carriage return), but that’s nitpicking.
3. I also like the in-game music, and the simple yet cute animated little characters. The big die right at the beginning has a nice rotation animation, gives it volume!
4. You even put contextual panels to display when hovering the mouse over choices! :) Very considerate of the player. There was definitely a lot of effort to make things clear.
5. The little sequence with the die rolling at the beginning of each turn may be just a little too long, I think you could either reduce it a bit, or let the player skip it (with a click, for example). Once again, really nitpicking. ;) Discard that, I realize you can already act during the animation. X) (My comments are made semi-on the fly, I apologize.) I wonder if you can convey this better to the player. I think you should at least make the die disappear: otherwise, you can have a lot of dice simultaneously rolling.
6. Does the enemy have the exact same attacks as us? I would have liked to know, because this is a very tactical/planning game. I am wondering if the system is not too symmetrical, because if both the player and the enemy have the same range, then you are bound to be able (or not) to perform the very same attacks at the exact same turns (except if the total mana counts differ). This may be less true when there are multiple enemies as in level 2, but still, this phenomenon is still somewhat valid, I think. Seeing how I was not attacked by in level 2, I guess abilities are not symmetrical; which is good! But then, I wonder if it is better to show the enemies’ skills (which would make the game more tactical) or not (which would push the game more on the random side). Or you wish for the player to learn by himself the different enemy types (seeing how there are two reds and two blues in level 3, this could well be), which can be a good idea too. Reaching level 10, I realize learning seems both practical and interesting. :) For instance, I could see how the healing enemies inflict 2 points of damage, and already roughly gauge their mana bars in level 9 (since they seem to mindlessly heal even when they are not wounded XD).
7. Haha, slain that red enemy from level 2 with a sword and heard his gasp. XD Cute!
8. I see that you earn experience from level to level.
9. Oh, a very interesting phenomenon at level 3: you can be surrounded by several enemies, which is to be avoided, because an attack die then results in multiple attacks! I realize this is somewhat chessy! :) I think the concept does work! Really realized it at level 3.
10. Question-suggestion: I wonder if only allowing the enemies to perform an action if the player does not skip his turn could be interesting. In this case, I am anticipating that strategically, once you have started hitting an enemy, you had better finish him off before healing, otherwise, he might heal himself too. And so, you should also concentrate on a single enemy rather than spraying damage. Would this make for a more interesting/balanced game? I am unsure, it should be put to the test if considered.
11. I could heal myself although I had zero mana… In any case, an easily fixable bug. (This was in a lower level before healing cost nothing, I think; or I may have not noticed it was free, in which case, discard this.)
12. Small bug: you can still attack the (wriggling) lying enemies. Except if you let this on purpose, for overkill. XD
13. Nice sound too when you try firing a magic missile at zero mana. I realize this sounds mechanical, weirdly. X)
14. It is nice that you put both keyboard and mouse controls; during level 8, I realize I have mastered the system enough to need the keyboard shortcuts. :) Oh, and you get some supplementary sounds for keyboard (such as the skipping turn one) which you do not have for the mouse! I would suggest also triggering them for clicking.
15. In level 9, I went through a long phase of non-attack dice, which let the (first!) healing enemy heal himself a lot; I wonder if this dice sequence was there on purpose. It may be strategic. I noticed you seem to have voluntarily put many walk dice at the beginning of each level. It seems voluntary, seeing how there was also a long phase of healing dice in levels 10 and 11, shortly after the initial ‘walking phase’.
16. I realized during level 10 that healing did not cost me mana anymore; maybe this was said in the lower-left log panel, but I missed it. I think upgrades should be stressed more (using some very visible central text and sound, for example; you know, the ‘LEVEL UP!!’ sort X)). By the way, I wonder whether infinite heal is overpowered or not… It all depends on the assortment of enemies. For my test, I still took care of my actions, but I felt it made the game rather easy and was a bit of a game breaker. I guess more magicians may make you need it (arriving in level 18 as I am writing this, I see two ominous such magicians approaching…). All right, I have just died in level 18 because of those two strong magicians. XD (And this is the end of my testing session.) So, what I said applied only partially, this is definitely a question of balance, especially if you extend the game with more abilities.
17. Seeing the deep blue enemy in level 12 able to move a range of 2 tiles, I also think you did a very good job at introducing progressively the various enemies, with different abilities. I think implicit tutorials like these are smart game design.
18. Very small pseudo-bug: when skipping while the missile attack is selected (for example), the range indication (ie the highlighted tiles) is still shown.
19. The AI seems a bit smart: the ‘magician’ guy does not come right next to me when he is able to fire a missile. Or was it not on purpose? On the other hand, you can manage to block some enemy by aligning him with another one; although that may be an advantage to the chess-like aspect of the game. :)
20. One last note on the theme: I think your use of the theme is more original than that of those entries that merely threw some random randomness (!) into otherwise classic genres.

In my eyes, this is a clever, enjoyable, and well-presented spin on ARPG/tactical combat that results in a semi-chess-like battle game. Well done, I was eager to see if there was an end to it before yielding under the vicious attacks of the magician duo. ;)

You only have 5 votes (soon 6!) at the moment I am writing this review, I hope your game gets noticed and rewarded the way it deserves to be, I see it as worthy. :)

Technical question: Ah, I see on the game page that you used Love2D! :) I love (! XD) this framework, almost used it for this game jam, but I was unable to correct the problems that arise for a navigator version made with love.js, and was afraid I would have trouble cutting out a proper menu template from a previous game. Did you use any library for the user interface, or made it all yourselves? Just out of curiosity. :)