itch.io

It is naught to worry for aiming to crash the game, that is what I do too.  The feedback on this front is very helpful and much appreciated.

When I was writing my design document, I had an intent in mind of designing "unfolding complexity":

• Initially, you can basically pretend you're playing a classic MOBA style ARPG.
• Then, the player should realize that they can customize their abilities by changing their equipped "trinkets" (Spellbooks, Rings, Flasks).
• Then, they get comfortable with commanding multiple simple units as a party.
• The gambit system is then revealed to them, to help scale up to control larger and more complex parties.
• Eventually they will pick up on the armour & weapon degradation mechanics and begin to manage their resources accordingly.
• Lastly, there are also formation specific gambits that allow the player to design integrated multi-unit formations with healers, archers, & fighters coordinating their abilities.

I had many more ideas in the design phase that I would love to implement, but I deemed that I must limit the scope to a 3 month project.  There will most likely have to be an Ingvanr Saga 2 to fully satiate my creativity.  But, that is a hungry fire to feed...

Regarding your thoughts on tutorialization, I am hoping to unfold those mechanics one mission at a time.  I only  have 3 arcs with 9 missions each planned at the moment however, so it would kind of suck to have half of the first arc be tutorials.  Perhaps it could be condensed into two missions, but on the other hand I'd like the player to be able to take their time to familiarize with one mechanic before contemplating the next.  I shall continue to meditate upon this.

I have also been experimenting with revealing mechanics through item descriptions, so that more casual players don't have to think about it too much and can just go for the "biggest sword & heaviest armour" play style, while more detail oriented players can gradually soak up the information and develop a more complex gameplay experience for themselves, or they can systematically seek out and read every item to create a highly optimized or creative build for their party.   Loading screens with items & descriptions would also be cool for revelations of this nature.

There is much more which could be said on these topics, but I shall restrain myself for now.

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts.