I think the game is neat. I have not played RTS games before, but this game was simple to get into. I enjoyed hearing all the units talking after I made selections, the moving commands, and even offscreen fighting audio cues. Unfortunately, I did not get the opportunity to figure out how to use the squad creator due to simply not understanding the controls. I actually did not even know you could create new buildings after watching the vod of the interview, seems I have been missing out.
One of the main issues I had with the game that kind of stopped me from continuing past the first level was the interaction from both the unit selection and click on the minimap. In the game whenever I clicked on the minimap all my units were deselected. Meaning I had to manually move the camera from my units after selecting them, to the location I wanted them to go. Which lead me to wish there was either a way to move the camera faster (a bandaid solution). I found out that you can move the camera slightly faster by pressing both WASD and performing the edge panning in the same direction. But I still wanted to be able to move the camera faster. This could be either setting the camera speed in settings or have a button being held that will change the camera's speed. The other more desired solution is to keep my units selected after clicking on the minimap.
Other things I wished to note:
- The minimap was somewhat difficult to understand from looking at it. What I understood was my units are green dots. But, I did not know any locations of the buildings to be captured until I noticed the color of the buildings was matched on the minimap.
- I initially believed on level 1 the minimap was flipped vertically because the starting camera rotation makes it appear as if your base is actually on the left of the map. But I realized after experimenting with the keys, you are able to rotate the camera. So, I could actually theorize the player's base can be oriented to the map if you rotate the camera in the proper direction.
- A potential solution can be displaying where the camera is looking at on the minimap, along with its rotational perspective. I testing in the game and noticed this is happening, but it is not visually represented very well in what direction the user is looking at.
- Or a more complex solution like allowing the minimap to rotate with the camera's perspective while retaining its ability to be clicked on.
- I also wanted to be able to continuously move my camera around the minimap by having the option of both left click or holding down left click.
I also wanted to note, I actually did not beat the first level after I believe I captured all the enemy bases. Because I think some enemy unit was somewhere on the map I could not find (I also noticed the units use a line-of-sight which may have lead to missing a single enemy unit behind a wall). It felt odd to not be able to destroy the enemy base after I had captured all the buildings and seemed to kill all enemy units (maybe a couple was out of sight). I do not know RTS but I do play MOBAs where you cannot destroy the enemy base until you destroy structures that defend it. So maybe the player should be able to attack the enemy base after they capture all the bases on the map? I am just a bit salty I could not attack the enemy base after seemingly capturing all the buildings (I did realize that I captured all the bases as I navigated the camera around the map and saw it was entirely lit up).