I looked into it and figured it out. It was mostly on my side. If the save game (that triggers on completing the tutorial) fails, when you enter the "real game" it spawns the tutorial box.
Probably a very niche bug, which only triggers for people who won't be able to save their game anyways.
P.S. I really enjoy these historical simulation board-gamey games.
Interesting basic setup, once I understood what was going on, the maze building puzzle was quite interesting, having to build for access to cats, space to dodge, the forced tiles in order.. But also, every round I would build basically the same way... the randomly selected cat doesn't affect my choices at all.
Also, the text is completely unreadable at some resolutions. Paired with how fleeting the cat description and lack of stats, everything is confusing. A easy fix is a encyclopedia of cats and maybe bestiary with stats.
I'm not sure the cause, but I see the issue too. I was basically setting everything to autobuy, then I noticed that there were still popups telling me to upgrade my planets. Clicked through, and indeed, some planets (mills) were not fully upgraded when I had the resources
Agree with the other comments about this having a narrative arc. Great job.
Probably a bug, but building the barrier lets you infinitely "retire" to get more barriers? Although it also seems using the barriers is bad in the long run anyways.
Thanks for the fix, but maybe another issue: the sacrificial temple/quetzcoatl's attack keeps following the target, creating a little swarm but doesn't "land". It's a cool visual, and if it works by doing damage every pass, then that's really cool, but I think it's just bugged.
Great game. Really love how connected all the mechanics are.
I'm not sure, if it's a bug, or I missed something, but enemies that are "killed" by a pyramid can show zero health but not die, and not be target by other towers, and still do damage.
I really enjoy economy / escalation games. I really like the writing for the roach too.
I managed to get a perfect rating with no retries (after knowing exactly what would show up, and doing a few test runs)!
Two main pieces of feedback:
1. Make your engine deterministic, and not affected by game speed. I find myself having to slow down the game to make sure my towers hit.
2. New game after losing is too easy, and for economy / escalation defense games, when it's too easy, the player can get really sloppy and still win. Decisions no longer matter. I much prefer resetting with no (or very little) carried resources, but better information on upcoming waves.
Noticed a bug: There's an area around the northeast wall that's buildable, and probably not part of any district. If you build a graveyard there, you can cause the game to crash on turnover.
I can never resist anything HoMM3. Nobody has managed to capture that magic since, and we need more people trying. Good luck.
Note: You can dupe units by drag-dropping to open the split unit menu, then clicking on an empty slot to move the unit, then confirming the position in the split unit menu. This was very funny when I met the mirror match.
Just wanted to say, this is an amazing piece of art and design. It's just so... elegant.
My one suggestion is maybe a mulligan for the initial draw, or a way to manipulate your initial hand. The reason being, many builds snowball, so a terrible initial hand can lose you the match. Outside of the tournament, and challenge run attempts, I found myself resetting if it didn't get a good starting hand, as this felt faster than playing a middling hand. I sometimes overdid it, and tried to force a semi-rare initial hand. (optimizing the fun out of the game).
P.S. Does the efficient achievement require being in challenge mode vs casual mode?
Everything was perfectly clear, except how the next room is unlocked. I optimized the start, but kept getting stuck on the next buildings not becoming available.
A nice evolution of an old formula. Excellent basic design, and pacing.
Really enjoyed it, but not sure if it has longevity.
My feelings and experience of playing the game:
Being frustrated by how my ships were getting destroyed before realizing that there are different ship types.
Being frustrated by losing all my ships to an asteroid field
Feeling good about figuring out all the ship types
Being frustrated by the alien swarm thing.
Being underwhelmed by the defense station
The nukes feel really nice.
Losing to the destroyer because I didn't understand how it worked, and I played a fast offense and had no missiles to defend against the initial meteor burst.
Doing a lot of busywork, moving ships around.
Winning by accumulating 1000 ships on the central planet before defeating the swarm.
Suggestions:
Make asteroids less punishing, more more explicitly dangerous.
Let people choose if a planet builds a defense station or missile base. Alternatively, certain planets are "defense station planets" and certain planets are "missile base planets"
The final boss appearing even if the swarm is not eliminated, and absorbing the remaining swarm. The timing can be dynamic/
Really enjoyed this game. There's something off about the math though. Often, at high worker counts, even though I have much more production in blue stuff than consumption (calculated via blue bar production / 4), my stores are stuck around 0.
One recommendation is to have the units "earn mana" be visible: ex. a number popping up as they die, or just periodically blink to show mana production.
Otherwise, it's just guesswork if you're doing well or not.
I've played all the "progress / tower" games, and this one is one of the best made, balance and lore and "connectedness" are all well done.
My biggest gripe with this one is that item stats are really hard to read. Showing both the item stats and removed/recalculated stats in the same side panel makes it quite hard to see the actual item stats. The equipment UI needs a rework.
Overall fun little game. Cannon was interesting. The dice rolling animation is fun in the beginning, but it becomes tedious later, especially once you figure out a strategy (rolling cannons under 10 then firing maximizes expected value. )
An option/upgrade to roll dice instantly, would help a lot.
sound design is really great. It would be awesome if it synched up with the music.
I think the bullets having multiple production stages is actually really cool. Instead of an upgrade that makes it 1-step, having an upgrade that automatically triggers each individual step would be better.
Same basic complaint as the other commenters: On my first character I had a farm setup that lasted too many years --- no more need to plan, and a grind to replant the same things every year. If there was a way to "replant" automatically every spring, it wouldn't be such a grind to plant x 15 times then next season x4. I think the shrine having exponential buffing power is a little too strong, Alternative would be tweaking the balance so it's not possible without cross generation planning. Ex, shrines that remain in place grow in power, or the possibility of building more powerful shrines on top of boulders.
Whew, beat it after several tries.