This game is awesome! Here is my breakdown:
*The Graphics
The graphics look great! And they didn't melt my computer too. I did crash, but I read a comment that says it is a known issue with one of the enemy types. The style is very gritty and serious, definitely suiting the theme. The main menu is untextured, but that is not a big deal, it is a jam after all. The signs lighting up per collision is a nice touch that I appreciated. The collisions could have used some more vfx, but again it is a jam so I wasn't expecting anything crazy. The beys could have visually been distinct, if there was not enough time for a different model then why not a recolored texture? I get focus mode is meant to show you which is yours, but a simple different texture would suffice, and I will talk more about focus mode in the design paragraph. I hope that in future versions of the game, the individual parts will have unique models because half of the fun of building [REDACTED] as a kid was the visual identity's and combinations.
*The Audio
The music is good, no complaints there. It suits the game, and helps elevate the action. The collision sfx could use some variation as it is one of the only sfx you hear over and over. The tutorial was hard to understand what he was saying, but simple subtitles could fix that. That is my only critique with the audio.
*The Design
The gameplay loop is very fun. Building your own personal beys and facing off other beys is done well. There are some problems though. First off, focus mode. Focus mode slows down time and shows you which bey is yours. The latter could be solved with a texture, but the former also has issues. Battles can take a while, most times I wanted to speed time up not down. I could want to slow down time to better time an ability. This would emphasize tactical skill instead of mechanical skill, and this emphasis is definitely in the spirit of [REDACTED]. The thing is, holding shift takes a whiiilllleee to slow down time, meaning to use it to aid me in using an ability I have to start hold shift wayyyy before when I need to use the ability, and the format of the game does not lend you such foresight. The general pacing of battles also is strange. For the majority of the gameplay you are not doing anything, just watching and cheering for your bey. This is especially true for early game, since at least for me it takes a good chunk of time to get an ability. This makes combat pretty much stats vs stats, which is fine. The problem is, while I want to be cheering and enjoying the action, the action is sparse. There are many times where the beys will miss each other, or approach very slowly, I even had a time where a bey corpse made the active beys spin in place for the rest of the match. (speaking of which, dead beys should despawn, them being active only slows down combat and creates wonky interactions). A potential solution to this is manipulating time. You already have the infrastructure for time manipulation because of focus mode. Time could be really fast, but slow down heavily when beys are near each other or a wall. This will speed past a lot of the fluff of battles, and dramatize the hits and wall interactions. Time manipulation is not the only solution, but doing nothing while nothing is happening does not feel great. I still had a great time though, and everything around building the beys is great.
Overall this a great game with a lot of potential, I had a lot of fun! Very spin, keep it up!