Interesting idea!
Having the multiple applications combine two game ideas is a smart use of the limitation, since many games find unique styles by doing exactly that.
The pacing of this game is definitely slow, and I think that the most engaging moments of a clicker game should be those first few hours, but this one seems to really slow down after you get the final soul gain upgrade. I think a part of this may be just from how gigantic the battlefield is. It takes so long for a unit to get across to the boss, combined with the fact that the swordsmen need to carry back any souls, which effectively doubles the size of the field. (It also doesn't help that the framerate tanks after you get a few units going)
Because units have to move back when they collect a soul, it can make all of them floating around after a large fight look more like a punishment than a reward. It can feel more like a roadblock that is allowing the enemies to regain their ground.
I think that this issue could be solved by having a fixed distance between the boss and the players tower, and defeating a boss simply spawns a different one in. You could also make this fit all onto one screen so the player can watch all of the units move and not feel lost as to what is happening. Thinking of games like Clicker Heroes or Tap Titans which present you with different bosses after defeating one, which can feel like progression. (And allows players to fight previous bosses to grind their strength)
Although, I do think there is a lot of room to explore within mixing these two games. Originally, I thought that not having any auto clicking upgrades would make it more tedious, but I realized that the auto clicking is basically your units. Which made me think of how you could get a lot more interesting interactions between the two gameplays. Being able to upgrade your units in ways that gain you more souls is a unique idea. Here are a few simple ideas:
- Upgrade a units movement speed, to effectively get souls faster
- Eventually turns into a teleport souls automatically
- Increase the amount of souls a unit can carry
- When clicking, units become more powerful
- Gain more souls related to the ground you have covered on the battlefield.
Having the fighting gameplay also gives a bit of incentive to holding a mass of orbs, since you can more often make a larger dent on the battlefield by having a ton of units go at once. Which creates a bit more of a dynamic of having to micromanage two different games at the same time.
I think there is good potential here for a new type of clicker game, but likely a lot of experimentation will be required.
The art style was very unique! I liked the look a lot. Its a shame that I couldn't really see the animations due to the limit frame rate.
Managed to beat the final boss by just having the game run while I wrote this review :)
Nice work!