Great game. Had a lot of fun optimizing my build order in multiplayer until none of the existing replay ghosts stood a chance of beating me (though there was still one person who had higher rating than me by the time I got tired of it).
Because some of the income + exp is dependent on battle performance, I imagine replay ghosts perform worse than the original player did by a substantial margin, because they're unable to hit power spikes at the same time as they did originally. Furthermore, I found that one powerful strategy was to use gold miners to get a lot of money during the maze phase, then finish out your maze with chaos towers before your dudes get there, then sell the chaos towers at the beginning of the next prep phase for the full refund so you can bankroll more gold miners. It's unclear to me how, if at all, the replays replicate that behavior. I've mixed feelings about whether such a strategy should be possible at all (it was fun here but would it be fun in a more competitive environment?), but I imagine it makes asynchronous multiplayer too player-favored if the replay isn't able to do it as well since it's so powerful to get an economic boost from miners and still maintain tempo with chaos towers, when it's already (possibly?) a bit player-favored due to the fact that replays can't adapt their build orders if they're winning or losing combats, as mentioned earlier.
One thing that seemed a little odd to me was the sell prices for towers that were not the one you most recently placed: if I buy a frost tower for 9 at the beginning of the game, then a bunch more frost towers until they cost 20 each, if I go back to sell my first frost tower, it'll sell for 9, and the price for another frost tower will go to 19. No actual money is lost if I were to sell every frost tower I had, but if I don't, I have slightly more money tied up in frost towers when I start building more. So, to be optimal, I need to either hunt down the frost tower that I bought most recently to sell first (which could get messy if I'm swapping around towers) or just sell all my frost towers just to be safe. Ideally, the towers should always sell for the current "surcharged" price, no matter how recently it was bought.
I won't comment on balance much because I don't think I've experimented enough to be an expert, but I noticed that spellbreakers, fire mages, and to a lesser extent defenders seemed to stand out the most in combat.
Had a couple issues with the UI and display:
- I couldn't see my opponents' squad composition outside of battle unless I hovered over each individual unit, where it would display the unit's portrait but named "CREATURE_".
- If I ever tried to look at my opponents' boards during combat, I couldn't figure out how to go back to looking at combat, so I just had to wait until combat finished.
- When looking at opponents' boards, it seems like its slightly more zoomed in compared to the view of my own board? Very minor issue and possibly a stylistic choice, I suppose, but it looked like the opponent's board didn't quite fit onto the screen.
- At one point during the campaign, I clicked to look at an opponent's board and then the game softlocked until I refreshed the browser. I can't remember exactly why - I think a dialogue box or the results screen popped up at the same time? Sorry for not having a detailed report for this one. -edit, it happened again when I clicked to look at the opponent's board when the battle results screen appeared at the same time.
Lastly, a QoL suggestion: please make it easier to upgrade/sell towers. Placing 30 towers is 1 click per tower; upgrading/selling 30 towers takes 2-3 clicks each. Maybe add a hotkey, or let me place down upgraded towers directly, or add a "demolish" tool to mass deconstruct?
Looking forward to future updates/releases. I particularly enjoyed the varied maps in the campaign missions, and hope to see more of those.