Hello! Welcome to Feedback Quest 8! My name's Hythrain, a co-host and one of the streamers for this event! This feedback is being written live as I stream your game! If you're interested in seeing my live reaction, let me know and I can send you a link to the VOD once it's posted to YouTube!
So my normal approach for any game in these events is simple: I get the game, make sure it's not a virus, then play it with as little information on how to play as possible. This way, I can judge how intuitively someone can figure out the game. Only if it's obvious that I need to read more will I do so. I note this so you can get a sense where some of these feedback comes from. In addition, I want to note that feedback and rating are different; don't use this feedback to gauge what I'll rate, nor should you view my rating as entirely indicative of my feedback.
So this game is honestly just too difficult at this point. Most of my attempts couldn't even see me get past the first round, though admittedly this is because I would also restart a lot if I felt like I just had no chance to win. While I generally did figure out the systems in play (you deal damage based on hearts, and dealing enough hearts to an enemy is 1 HP of damage. Your damage is also dependent on your HP), I never felt like I understood how they worked. To explain what I mean, I was trying to figure out the stats. I had assumed one stat was in regards to damage, so if that number was higher than I didn't need as much HP to deal lots of damage. However, I then had a match up with an enemy that had a much lower attack value but more HP, and it did far more damage than I would've expected it to. Then there's the stat that I assumed was for range, which on most units was 1. I assumed this meant they could attack one block away. However, the Hunter (who can attack anywhere on the field and would need a 12 to go from one end of the field to the other) was only 3.
One of the biggest difficulties of this game is that it does nothing to teach the player how anything works. None of the numbers make sense upfront. You have to infer everything, and even then it can be difficult to know if you're accurate. For example, I don't have any idea how the Defense stat interacts, I don't know what the stat that showed a range of numbers even does, and I don't know what the last stat does. Meanwhile, I feel confident that I need this knowledge to be able to play the game. As the developer, you likely know what all these numbers mean. Players don't have your innate knowledge, though, and thus need something to teach them.
On top of this, it feels like the scaling for the strength of the computer just gets insane. The furthest I got was to match 4, where I was pitted against two higher quality units (one with a sword, one with a spear), a hunter with a lot more HP than mine had, and a fourth unit. Meanwhile, I only had one higher quality unit, a hunter that as going to be wiped out very quickly, and two far weaker units that stood no chance. In another run, I was against a peasant with an insane 36 HP that was able to hit as hard, if not harder, than my strongest unit; even though my unit has a 5 in its attack and the peasant is only a 2. That is how much the massive HP scaled it.
Even from the first level, I find myself at a disadvantage. I can get a hunter with the highest HP available to me, but if I'm facing a hunter in the first round then it's most likely going to have more HP than my hunter. It got to a point where I just refused to do the first round if I fought a hunter, because I needed the ability to get some ranged damage for free to have a chance to get into the second round.
The whole aspect of damage being influenced by your HP also results in more equal fights taking far too long. A starting round where my hunter was about the same as the enemy hunter saw us slowly whittle away at each other while the melee units did their own thing. In the end I think it was over 10 rounds before one of the hunters finally died. It becomes a slogfest to deal with.
On top of this, I found a few bugs.
1. If you go to the menu on the top right so you can quit a match right as a round transition is about to start, the round transition will stop the menu animation entirely. The player then needs to hit the button again.
2. If you hit Play when not in full screen mode and then change it to full screen once on the screen to build your party, the menu will be shifted to one side and have part of it cut off - including the button to start the match.
3. While the game's system is clearly designed where you can perform other actions like a shield or attack so long as you don't use your full movement, the hunter doesn't have this. If you move one tile, it can't attack. This wouldn't be so bad if the hunter had enough movement to keep most threats at bay when it needs to run, but it has the lowest movement in the game. Only enemies that have that same movement will be kept away, and even then they can gain ground by moving the right way. So in my mind, this is a bug because the hunter should be able to attack.
Those are the main things I noticed. Hope this helps you out! :)