Hello and welcome to Feedback Quest 9! My name is Hythrain, and I'm one of the hosts for this lovely event! I'm also one of the streamers, so both the game and this feedback are being done live! If you want to see the see the VOD, let me know and I'll link you to it when it's uploaded to YouTube!
I won't lie... I felt pretty brainless playing this. It felt like all I did was click to spawn a lot of cats in order to make progress, along with doing a few upgrades. Once I reached a point where the fights were getting difficult, I pulled out to see if I could "level" and then shortly after stopped to write this up. I'm just going to cover my notes in order here.
First, when I first started the game I wasn't able to read the tutorials correctly as they weren't setting themselves above all other text. It wasn't until I reloaded the game that this correct, but honestly it doesn't make sense that that was how it reset so... might be something going on in the code.
I also didn't like how I couldn't go Back when I was going to start the first level. While I understand why this was done, to me it felt kinda irksome. The only time it would work was when leaving the Upgrade screen.
I found it strange that so many of the starting cats you have are listed as Defender cats, yet they have better offensive stats than the very first cat, which is listed as a Melee. I think having something to explain what these titles mean would be helpful.
I also wish I had the ability to read the in-battle tutorials without the action going on, especially when it's one teaching me how to do something I may not know (like being able to direct a cat to attack something specific).
Next, you make use of ESC to access the pause menu. This in itself isn't a bad idea. However, right now the game can only be played in browser. If I happen to make the game fullscreen, pressing ESC doesn't issue the pause command but instead cancels fullscreen. I then have to hit ESC again to actually pause, and when I want to get back into the game I have to full screen it again. A secondary button for pausing would be ideal here.
One thing I found myself wishing was that I had the ability to deploy my cats using my keyboard. With how often you're hitting them, having to click over and over and over can get taxing on one's hands. I already suffer from hand problems due to a lifetime of gaming, and so things like this can cause me a lot of pain for no good reason. As an aside, I also feel like the rate you're spawning cats should be slower. Right now, it's a 2 second cooldown per cat. While changing this would also require changing a lot of the stages (particularly the harder ones) to compensate for the slower spawn rate, I think it would be better overall.
Speaking of spawning cats, why have only three set up when you start the player with 8? I assume this is because doing the first few levels with 8 would trivialize them, because that's exactly what happened. However, in that case it would be better if you just start the player with three and give them a lot of meteorite shards in those first few levels in order to build their starting roster. That way players learn the game without it being trivialized, and over the next few levels they get enough shards to fill the roster up.
I found it confusing that the difficulty of levels ramps up pretty quickly, only to suddenly drop again. By the end of the first page, you've gone from Easy to Very Hard. Then it drops back to Easy by the second level of the second page. What's the reasoning behind doing this?
And speaking of pages, I would recommend making it that when the player finishes a page of levels, it progresses to the next page automatically. I also think that levels that are beaten should have something on them to indicate they've been completed. At least with these, the player won't be faked out into thinking they cleared the area once they clear the first page. I say this because it almost happened to me and... well, I know that there are a lot of people out there who are dumber than me. I could see there being people who get to the end of the page (which was listed as "Very Hard" level) and then thinking they finished the area.
Lastly, this isn't from my notes but is a general thing... I wish this game required more from me mentally. Like I said at the beginning, all I was doing was brainlessly spawning cats over and over. After I did the first few levels, I ended up doing a bunch of upgrades and then just went on a brainless run until I finally encountered resistance in the levels. This made it feel less like a game and more like a task. Given how the cats seem to have different effects, I feel there could be a lot of ways to make this more strategic.
And that's all from me! I hope this helps!
Edit: Almost forgot... sometimes when I opened the game, there wouldn't be any sound. No idea why.