First off, thank you for such a thoughtful response to my game - this my first "real game" and the fact anyone is playing it at all makes me so happy, much less to the extent that you have to give me such feedback!
Unit Assignment / Information
For sure. That's one of the things I wanted to fix before releasing it but had such a hard time getting the random generation / army assignment to work properly initially that I chose to come back to it. 100% agreed.
I have a backstory & also unit secondary unit behaviors planned for all units (for example, boars will have a damage multiplier up to a set maximum when near other boars, Goblins can be assigned as either ranged or melee, gnomes have a chance to evade attacks, etc.) but I realized I need to overhaul the battle system for that to really work.
User Interface
I suck at UI and am learning a lot about it as I make this. I think all of your feedback regarding it should be implemented and have heard similar feedback from my friends. Ideally I'd like a book in which you hover over the unit and the other page gives a quick summary about them. Clicking the Gnome to get unit information isn't great, and I need to have that information at a glance. That's one of my biggest "overhauls" for the next update.
Tutorial / Time
Tbh the tutorial was me learning how to make the mechanics haha. I decided to see how to piece together the mechanics there statically before I took it on dynamically - it was more-so for me than it was the player.
Agreed on the approach, I remember seeing Arin Hanson make a video like 10 years ago where he used Megaman as an example for teaching the player and feel like your insight is in a similar vein.
Other Stuff
- Unit selection is ass, I'll rework that to save previous assignements (up to whatever max is left). I need to play around with that too, I dont' know if a spinbox is the best way to go but worked at the time
- The Camp will be more dynamic, I actually want a fenced area that fills up with hogs when you get them, a little area for Trolls, and an area for gnomes / goblins to congregate as you get more. Have them come / go to reflect the players army (not 1:1 but you get the idea). I just didn't have time to implement prior to the jam
- Battle Juice, 10000%. I wanted this from get-go but wanted to refrain from fudging with the battle system too much because I kept breaking things haha.
Overall, thanks again for your thoughtful feedback and taking the time to both play the game and write this up. I see this game as more of an alpha build / proof of concept at this time and will actually be making a little dev blog in the coming weeks as I update & implement these and many other changes if you're at all interested.
I saw your portfolio and it's very impressive. It's clear from your feedback alone that you're a seasoned dev so it means even more to me that you played / responded. I appreciate it more than I can put into words.