Played in Browser.
Interesting visuals, tutorial was pretty easy to understand and get moving quickly. This game felt like legit demo or clean vertical slice for a much bigger game. I was surprised how much I got out of it. Also, I didn’t know I couldn’t shoot overlapping my allies, my bad. Maybe the United Government are evil... Because I got one ship killed, it let me “repair” it from 0 after the mission, but in the next area it wasn’t available on screen to use. Maybe intentional, as later I unlocked a revive, but “repair” might be confusing for fallen ships if that was the intention. And I learned what ruefully means today! One of the ships is really hard to aim for not much reward it feels like = support tank alpha. Maybe intentional and it builds up later in the story, I just didn't notice much of a difference in damage vs the reward of getting it straight. Spaceship alpha1 would just auto attack and waste their turn when fighting the AA Defender and would continue to do it randomly afterward. Looking into it, might be registering clicks at the bottom of the screen between turns before the ui comes back for my turn; as I’m clicking through dialogue > it clicks an action. Might be nice if I can take back a mistake when still my turn or a way to quick wipe and start a run over when I know it’s already impossible to continue. Fibonacci strike also causes a brief stutter every time I use it (again, I was in browser, so maybe this is fine on the downloaded version). Overall had a lot more fun than I anticipated! Like I said, this felt like a demo to a much bigger game. I’ll be interested to follow the progress!
Looking at your questions,
- Game fun? Yes, at first it can seem like it’s going to be complicated, but once you get through the tutorial, it is actually pretty easy to pickup and play mission after mission.
- How catchy is the story? I only have a minor “opinion” from the beginning:
- 1) Can we get a little more setup on the main characters and the united government? Kinda give me more reason to care about these characters since it goes straight into this big battle with an alien space fleet who later challenge my allegiance to this “united government” (who I know nothing about currently. I could be bought!). Not much, just a brief window into understanding.
- 2) Take or leave this one, opinions alert: the opening scene/dialogue, “We peacefully protested against them but they started openly killing us to “set an example”.” ‘Peacefully protested’ might sound a little more current day way of phrasing it vs this advanced technological world/future and these people appear to be even more separated/regressed from it. So maybe some rephrasing and practice of reduction to more like, “We protested peacefully… They made an example of us.” I think because you already have the art visuals for dead people and blood, you could skip reiterating the “killing” and also make the topic more hesitant and remorseful. Sort of like, the pain hits harder when the reader/player has more they have to interpret from the context given. A person’s own imagination is more powerful and personal to them than anything we could write. Kinda like how in scary games or movies, not showing the monster or the whole monster has the person, experiencing it, filling in the blanks for what could be there. Very potent stuff. So for the darker moments in story, more visual clues and saying less can hit harder. Again, opinions, you’re the visionary at the end of the day and I can say, I think it has a good balance of dialogue <to> playing the game. Sort of leaves me on a cliff hanger for now until we see what comes next. The zoom out scale of the crazy overwhelming odds that was coming was impactful since, as the player, I know at this point how combat plays out and how insane it would be to fight this entire fleet. I did enjoy the raising of the stakes and can’t wait to see what crazy thing I’m thrown into next!