Decided not to fill the feedback form, since there werent right answer options to give, since there is something badly wrong in this game which makes the rest irrelevant.
First. Looks great, plays great, All those Chest openings, stuff unlocking etc. they are all just simply great.
I have played countless Tower Defence games, and I enjoy every time I see something new put to them. When I saw this had the Merge and Tower movement possibility, I was first very much excited, and when I did first merges in the first level, that was very satisfying and fun.
Movement however was disappointing, since idea was that you could move the tower, but there was HP cost, you practically lost, was it one third or fourth of your towers HP by moving them, making the moving of towers unsatisfying, especially since I saw no reason to move those towers either.
Notice at this point, that I only completed 3 levels (which is since there is a big problem in this game).
I also like the tower defence option where placing towers makes enemies figure out new paths to the goal.
However, I am suspecting having both Repath and Merge, might not be compatible option to have together.
For this game has a very big problem.
Reason why I didnt even play level 4, was because I didnt think I could pass it anymore, for I barely got past the level 3. What? Was it so difficult? No. I actually had 4500 of money left when the level ended.
Then how come? Because that merging is so painful I didnt want to do it. I knew that to get past level 4, I would need to do much more merging, but that is just too annoying to do.
So yes, I love the idea of merging towers, and it felt real fun in level 1, I could also see a possibility of getting completely new towers, by merging two different towers together.
But right now, the problem is that you are supposed to stuff the level full of towers (due to repathing purposes) and at that point merging those towers becomes really, really painful. For first of all, to effectively use up that 4500 I had left after level 3, I would have had to do whole lots of merging, making the game become a tedious job of making merges, instead of being a tower defence game.
Second, You merge a tower, and the path is open again, then you tediously have to build a new tower, at that precise same location, meaning that I once again dont get to have the fun of building another tower, but instead, I have to concentrate on getting the mouse to exact right location. So instead of concentrating on Tower Defence game, I am in need to concentrate on small tedious tasks, and this is the problem.
You need to solve this problem some way, since right now you have a great game that is completely unplayable due to becoming annoying micro-management game of the worst kind.
Similarly, while I really liked all those Items you get and can put them to towers, once again, having million towers there, and then trying to find the one tower that had the previous item, to put the next item, is very tedious task again. Instead of being a game of "Hey, another power up, what fun, im going to put it to that tower" it can become "Another item, which one should I put it to" (after million unnoying clicks) "hey, thats the one, got the upgrade in place! Wha? Enemy wave already gone".
Im not sure how to correct this properly. One unfortunate possibility would be to simply remove the merging part. You would have completely good and sellable tower defence then, in which you could simply clicking a button upgrade your towers. It would be a good game, but, that Merging is something I havent seen in any other Tower Defence, and would be the selling point to me.
Then you could remove the idea of concentrating on using towers to make paths. That could work, but it would need quite big overhaul in all your levels, by other words, lots of work. Not to mention, making those paths is basically fun too.
Or, you could keep the path idea, but make the path decisions smaller. Like having only few tower spots, which would however affect enemys pathways.
Basically that Tower Merging idea is fun, but it becomes unfun when there are too many towers to merge.
Some way the options to merge need to be reduced for it to stay fun.
For example, maybe there could be a rule that you can merge only to towers right beside you, and then make it in such way that player needs to make decision of does he put similar tower right beside to have a possibility to merge them later, or if he puts another kind of tower, since he really needs that other kind of tower.
Maybe one possibility could be that you can put a tower to a square only once per level, therefore if merging with another tower, that spot stays clean for the rest of the game? This way it wouldnt come too tediouc merging those towers, as there is limited amount of towers you can/want to merge. Right now it was very annoying in that if I really wanted to merge every tower to max level, I practically had three spaces I used to put those towers I was going to merge with the one that was already in location, by other words, instead of focusin on tower defence, I was focusing on repeating same mouse movement/click combination endlessly, and had to also focus on having moved the mouse to a right spot. That completely killed the fun.
Or maybe just new User Interface could even fix this. For problem wasnt so much that I had to merge million times, but that it was tedious to do so.
Currently building a tower works in such way that you have to click on empty spot first, then you double click the tower image to build the tower. Then you click that tower, and click on move, after which you can finally merge it.
Maybe solution would be to click on that tower image, and then when ever you click on an empty spot, it already builts it, and then you could simply go on top the existing tower, press mouse button down, and drag it on top of another tower, release mouse, and merge is happened.
This way you could quickly move several towers to merge them, and then by one click of a button always buils a new tower in place of the one you just move away, and again simply drag the new build one to merge with another. This might make it easy enough to make the game enjoyable again, but not sure it would fix the problem. But might be worth a try as the least work requiring option, since then you dont need to rework on your levels, just change the interface a bit.
I was planning to and wanting to play this game further, since I was very much wanting to see what kind of towers and levels would have came later, since that merging seemed such a fun concept and I was wondering if you had some more new fun ideas there further ahead too, but I just couldnt get past that tediousness of how I had to keep merging towers countlessny annoying way to get further, so I just stopped after level 3.
But really, this is extremely well done game and practically ready to sell, just with that one big flaw. I could easily see myself even buying this, as long as that problem is fixed.