I spliced together my pig and my lion to create an unusual lion, which I now have that card visible in my Deck. But when I try to go into Battle, the selection for the card is not visible. I figured maybe because I had just fused it I needed to manually add it into the deck. When I click on the Deck tab, i see it in my Deck according to the card size value and the image is displayed but was still not available for battle. So then I figured I would remove it from the Deck, which I am able to, then I added it back to the deck by clicking on it, which the Deck Size reads it is in there again. But then when I try to go into battle following this chain of events, that Unusual Lion I had created, is not available a a selection to take into the Battle..?
Then I purchased 2 lions from the Shop which I am then bale to add them into the deck and they are available as a selection to take into Battle. So I figured I would try to fuse these two lions, which I did and created a different unusual lion, however, even though it is in the Deck with the 2nd Unusual Lion, it does not appear as a possible selection when I try to go into battle.
So now neither of my Unusual Lions are available to select for battle even though they are the only two cards in my deck. Is it possible that any time I merge my creatures, that the Deck UI says it's available but for some reason it did not get added to some list or pool that contains the available option for what should be in the deck as my selectable creature for battle?
Anytime I merge a creature and it says it is in my deck, I cannot select it for battle, it is not even visible as an option. I also removed them both from the deck, to add them in again, and went into the Battle Select again, and still nothing. It looks like I can only battle with the original creatures available from the shop and none of the merged creatures..?
(I wanted to remove all of that but I figured it may provide ideas to explain my thought process, so I left it)
So after some more thought, I went back and then found that I needed to slot in the abilities that were outside of the Helix, into the slot within the Helix (which the HELP does explain this to a degree, I just assumed this was only relative to the splicing process). After confirming these abilities through the UI then I was able to select the creatures cards for battle. I think it would be worth mentioning that you need to have your creature abilities assigned through the Helix slots before they can be deployed into battle, even if they are in your deck. I just thought that because the creature came with those actions paired to them, that they would be immediately available, but they must be assigned.
The battle needs a way to convey the information that is processing. I can see the abilities are happening because the graphic change of the health bars, but the creatures being static doesn't let me feel anything from the battle. They need some kind of visual and or audio feedback to translate the effect of an animal's action (whether its dealing damage to another creature or healing itself). Conveying this information is even more crucial when the detail of having "stacks" of an ability becomes a possibility.
I actually thought I had to select an ability, then end my turn in order for the ability to resolve, I didn't make the connection right away, that clicking the ability would process it. But this was also not helped by having 1 stack pf each ability when first starting, that reinforced that I had to end my turn for the ability to process. Once I had a creature that had a value greater than 1 on its ability icon... I was like... what is that? I get two!? Then I realized that each click reduced a stack until it reached 0, and each click would process the ability~ now the need for visual feedback is extra crucial. There is so much happening when you click these abilities that it's easy to miss what is actually going on aside from watching chunks of the health bars vanishing and coming back (damage / healing, etc).
The "Genes" tab is really neat and I like how you use the DNA helix to display the creature abilities. It is interesting to see how the abilities will fill different areas. It looks unique and fits the game's theme. There is a lot of experimentation to be had to figure out things. I'm not sure how much of this is predetermined or luck, or if it's actually a controlled science to create creatures with the desired abilities.
*The Pause Button is in the way of the enemy Health Bar. Some of the UI gets cut off in spots and is hard to see some elements. I suspect that that is an overlap of some elements staying active when they should be disabled and vice versa. After I had like 5-6 creatures and was trying to confirm abilities for the new ones I purchased, I went to the GENE tab, and seen that I had the cards in my deck but I was not able to access the new creatures to assign their ability slots. I lost access to the ability assignment slots in the GENE tab.
You have basic feedback with the UI elements, I look forward to the same type of treatment to the creatures when they battle each other! Maybe some audio additions?~ music... sound effects. Either way, if this gets some changes, I would come back to play... as this is generally interesting to me.