Got around to properly play this (was a little overwhelmed my first time around). This is just straight up smurfing, how, how did you make it in two weeks? That's insane. It's so strategically deep and elegant—the par system, getting the first taken piece, naturally growing complexity; as a systems game designer, I'm both very inspired and very humbled. I've seen on your website that you was inspired by Into the Breach and Mosa Lina and as a big fan of both, you damn well nailed it. I loved the game, but the review is mostly critical (and fairly disordered).
I liked the melancholic main menu music, made for a very special, rare vibe; the rest of the music felt way less intriguing which is fine, just a taste thing. I loved the BADASSERY of the final sequence but the music was too active.
The last boss was kind of underwhelmingly easy, since there were like six completely blind spots for all of the enemy pieces; maybe in a true boss fashion the gigaking could randomly move one tile at a time to make the whole thing more exciting.
Didn't understand a lot of things even after beating the game. Why were some pieces green when I placed them? Why did some enemies previewed their movement as dots when they had crosses on the top-left scheme, and vice versa? How do I know if someone can leap over obstacles? Wish it was all explained better.
Some incentive to use as little pieces as possible would be nice, especially for the vampire class where I often got to win with very few pieces; just nice to be patted on the back when you feel like you did something smart.
The game generally felt too easy in the second half; levels took some thinking but I was never worried. I also never used like a third of my piece types. Makes me wonder if some semi-randomized limitations can work for the late game, like sometimes locking you out of your most used pieces or something. Also could be a smaller amount of obviously good safe spots, and enemies in harder to reach positions; in my winning run I only had to sacrifice a piece once or twice, and I wish the game forced me to tactically lure enemies out more. I only rocked the Vampire class yet so my gripes can be specific to it :)
My first run ended by a softlock where I couldn't reach any pieces and they couldn't reach me (and I ran out of money). Would like a "resign" button to at least see the death screen in such a case. Maybe the threefold repetition rule from chess can be a resign option :D
I wished for a little more sense of progression I guess, as in moving through the story and space. Swapping color palettes and showing N/6 counter are both nice tricks but for a full game I hope there's more—story tidbits, an overworld map, maybe short non-gameplay sequences and stuff like that.
"Shortcut" is an extremely sad ability, fundamentally hated it. The game is so insanely intrinsically fun, why would you make an ability that basically says that meta-progression is more important than actual gameplay? Also, a little odd that "passive income" costs the same as "+1 par", they basically do the same thing but the former is always better. Passives where generally hard to keep track of and I kept forgetting that I had them... Maybe "pins" that you can apply to a single piece type (and get a persistent visual indicator on that piece) would work better in that regard?
Various QoL that you probably know about but still worth mentioning:
- Shield could have an indicator;
- Would be nice if enemies previewed their possible movement over existing pieces as well, maybe with half the opacity or something;
- Diagonals can be hard to visually parse over gaps, a translucent grid over everything would be nice;
- Maybe would be better to keep consistent sorting for the pieces on the right so it's easier to find specific ones, since they can look samey;
- There was a small but noticeable buffer time after finishing a turn where nothing really happened but I couldn't move my pieces.
I had a blast playing this. You're a wizard and I refuse to believe otherwise. Great job!