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Did a lot of your UI suggestions immediately, and will do the rest later.

Endgame popup: 
It's kinda hard to decide when tooltips + feedback/animations are enough and when a tutorial popup is needed. 
I think I'm going to try and make non-diegetic tutorial popups feel less like dialogue popups (place textbox near what they're about, text appears instantly, different look)
And then try and teach the player to look at tooltips when stuff gets framed, so that some of the tutorials can be dialogue + framing the UI elements that dialogue is talking about.
So definitely going to add something for Endgame, but it might not be a full explanation.

Enemies disappearing: Yeah it's that it's happening to humans + 
Killing is a natural assumption when nothing is stated, but the characters  don't seem like people who would just ignore killing a bunch of people, so it feels eerie.

Like going in, you're expecting that the slime society will be weird and alien in some sort of interesting way. When the slimes fought some humans and then decided to go try to trade with those people's "companions", I theorized (briefly) that slimes don't really view violence in the same way as people. That they can't really be killed with violence, so they think fighting isn't a big deal.

My perspective might be the weird one, though. It's been on my mind since I started thinking up games, that when humans (or creatures with human-like behavior) are enemies, I want to try and make them feel more human than they often do. That means giving them good enough AI that they don't look completely stupid, but it also means that violence has a certain gravity and says a lot about the person who does it.

Items feel more manageable than when I've played it in previous IMGjams.

Tense moments: mostly came down to not thinking enough about healing. On the Knight fight, I had very low-tier healing item on Tanko, and then he got focused and I used a healing scroll. In one of the steps of the last fight, I used a minor healing scroll because I'd mixed them up with the other healing scrolls, so Tanko got taken out. Other than that it never felt harder than easy-medium, but it sounds like that's the intent for now.

The tutorial was a lot at once. The main thing I feel like I should know, but don't, is how affinity affects incoming attacks of that element (I can’t remember if there is an effect at all), and how attacks with multiple affinities work.

Story

Tavern interactions show a little about the world, but they felt forgettable / I kinda ended up clicking everything but skimming. And then deliberately started paying attention again around halfway through.

the early game dialogue is a lot of the same stuff. Like we’re immediately prompted to talk to a bunch of people in a row, but a lot of the interactions are very short and uninteresting.

If I expect the slimes to act as just very nice fantasy humans, I rarely get surprised or intrigued by anything that happens.

The main interesting thing in the story is the tonal dissonance between the niceness + cheerfulness together with the fighting + presumably bad things happening where there are humans and not the hero slimes + a lot of humans dying (?) on screen. Characters sometimes express hope that there can be diplomacy, but the invaders are usually treated nuisances and dangers. They disappear as soon as they're defeated, with no explanation, no discussion of captives. Feels like the idea is to depict white imperialists as standard game enemies we don't need to care about. But for me, the way they're not acknowledged after they're defeated undercuts the niceness and makes the game feel eerie.

Core gameplay

I think the game kinda dragged on towards the end, and I started thinking less hard about decisions. Part of that is just playing all of it in one day.

I’m not sure if it would be more fun or less fun if it was actually hard. I think it could easily get very stressful if it was hard enough for the attrition to matter. If it became beneficial to replay fights and try to lose less resources.

But I guess items keep getting stronger, so any lower-tier items you wasted matter less and less as time goes on. That might be enough to quell that impulse.

It’s very opposite from my design philosophy, but some consequences are neat, e.g. healing scrolls feel like they’re an emergency tool at the start, but I can see how they fit in as an alternative to Guardian in the late game, a normal response when enemies make many spread-out attacks.

UI:

In the start, I put a lot of items in the bags, and they weren’t transferred to the belt even though there was space in the belt. It seems like items are only moved from bag to belt when the belt runs out of an item? Or something like that.

I keep clicking an item and then clicking another item, expecting to select the second item, and then they swap instead.

Clicking sort by level while already in sort by level mode results in level 3 (probably just highest level?) items staying the same, and the rest of the items reversing order internally in the levels – e.g. if I sort and then Small Earth Strike is first of the level 2 items, and I sort it again, it will end up last of the level 2 items. 

When sorting by a criterion, maybe show dividers where it changes? E.g. when sorting by level, there would be a mark of some sort between the last level 1 and first level 2 item.

Sorting by inventory slot is kinda worthless for slimes.

The inventory opens every time you loot. When looting the chests at the human camp, you first loot some enemies and then loot the chests immediately afterwards.

Cooldowns on the slimes’ abilities could be visible without hovering the button

Using a cookie in the menu puts it into the character's inventory instead (but you can use it in the inventory)

Hm, all of those ideas for changes would be mostly after the section you're stuck on. Maybe the issue is you missed some info in the tutorial popups because of the small text.
The intended solution for that fight is.
- you need to stand next to the boss (put your threat on them) every turn to prevent them from healing.
- you need to Brace! some turns, try to keep some block for next turn. Then not Brace! next turn. Because it costs your reaction, so you won't deal any damage.

Do you feel like you're doing that and it's just too hard? If not, which of those things is new to you? 

Thank you! How far did you get?

Overwhelming: I can think of a few ways to spread the tutorials out more. 

Might add another phase to the first fight, and make the first phase slightly quicker if you know what you're doing.

But also I'm realizing. The player is kinda expected to lose the second fight the first time they try it, but the way that happens is probably quite discouraging and drawn-out. I can make it a bit more snappy and make it clear that it's expected.

• Have the characters acknowledge the loss and call for a restart
• Restart from the start of phase 2 instead of from the very start of the fight
• Keep the failure condition from the first phase (any ally falls) instead of changing it to Captain falls, to make the loss more snappy. And if the first try is almost always a loss, that means I can delay some of the tutorials until the second try.

Resolution: Scalable and higher resolution UI is already next on my list for after the jam. Used to want the game to be pixel-consistent, but there's so much text it's not really worth the restrictions.

It's good. I do agree hitboxes feel a bit big.

I got 60 seconds. No real complaints or bugs aside from. You can shoot through the wall if you're very close to it. I used that to get rid of the autofire and/or shoot enemies before they can get close sometimes. It Feels like a bug, but I'm not sure it should be changed.

Tactics I used

At first, I tried standing up against a wall and then shooting 9 shots in the exact same direction, so they'd be a predictable and then avoidable threat that still clears the first few shields. I think there's potential in that, but it felt more effective to never bounce bullets deliberately, shoot the first few enemies through the wall before they enter the dodecagon.

I think trying to deliberately hit something by bouncing off the dodecagon is too risky. Instead I'd shoot slightly right/left of the shields and then quickly move in the same direction so they follow and point their shield away from the bullet. Still hard, but likely to clear the bullet if you miss. Also just, they all move at the same speed, so they'll collect into one predictable threat if ignored. If you're making levels, maybe have one with mostly shields / with shields added to other enemies, but in a square/pentagon/hexagon instead of a dodecagon, to emphasise bouncing more.

Also, tried to stick to the middle of the screen in terms of up/down, since it's easier to see enemies coming from the side. And did not play in full screen. That's potentially an improvement you could make! Allow adjusting how zoomed in the level is. Having the level smaller on the screen means it's easier to see every part of it at once, but doing that with browser means you'll accidentally click outside the game sometimes. I do like that it's hard to see enemies coming from certain directions, though.

The noise gets quite grating. Maybe have a little randomness in pitch and length, and. Have a milder noise when doing unimpressive things, and a slightly longer and more jubilant noise/animation when doing more impressive things.

Whether a move will make the puzzle unsolveable feels very random, and it's very punishing for how random it feels. Maybe instead of resetting, you add multiple new numbers? So it's a setback but not a setback to the start of the level.

Zen mode: disable hints. Track something other than time, e.g. they should try to combine numbers as few times as possible? Maybe like. They have a counter that starts at 1. When they combine 2 exactly equal numbers, if those numbers aren't prime, the counter is multiplied by that number. You want the number on the counter to be as high as possible.

The only real complaint I have is, it feels a little awkward to select and submit answers without using a mouse, since it's. Type name, press down (and sometimes up) to pick an answer (even if you wrote the name perfectly correct), press enter, press tab to go to guess, press enter.
And if you press tab at the wrong time, it loses focus on the game.
I feel like it should be possible to move to "guess" while you have a name on the list highlighted, without first clicking enter. Or to directly guess from there without moving to a button. That increases the risk of misclick, though.

I think I'd add something like:
left arrow moves focus to the text field, right arrow to move focus to the guess button.
If you press right while the list is showing, it automatically selects the currently highlighted result from the list, or the top result if you haven't selected one.

Also, in the City mode. Country isn't really that useful since it seems like there aren't many cities in the dataset per country. I wonder about mentioning country somewhere else, and having language as a thing you get info about instead. Might become more useful if you include more cities, though.

By board I just mean the map. I'll need a tutorial for that, then.

By collisions, I mean when a character is affected by Push, but doesn't have space to move, so they suffer another effect instead.

Glad it was easier to comprehend this time!

I'll need to emphasize more that Brace spends a reaction. The main reason for that cost is that it would be guaranteed damage in a lot of circumstances if it didn't. It's supposed to be a real decision whether you use that (to keep them very safe and have a lot of block next turn if they get ignored) or Get Ready! (if you want reactions)

Commit greys out if you have fewer than two characters who are on the board and not on exits. There's a tooltip that explains, but I can add something more obvious. And a lose condition if you ever have only one usable character. And maybe grey out Undo when there's nothing to undo to.

You're about halfway - there's two more phases.

Just to check if there's something you missed.

Did you feel like the boss healed a lot, or were you usually able to prevent it?

Did you understand how to summon characters onto the board, and how to move them off the board?

Please tell me how you think collisions work (without checking)

I find some of this a bit condescending, but you are right that it's easier to grasp a game if it properly shows you when e.g. reaction attacks happen and when you hover something that's clickable. I was sorta planning to try and put together the tutorial properly over the course of today and tomorrow, but yeah it's hard to judge how good a tutorial it is when things like that are missing. So yeah I'll begin with that (and maybe have it in a good place in a few days), and try to finish the second portion of the tutorial by next jam.

I had a few more thoughts after posting:

I ended up with quite a lot of ammo as I got further in. Like 80ish pistol shots and 60ish laser shots, 12ish grenades before they got reset for the boss. Maybe it could be interesting to have some hazard that's hard to avoid and reduces your ammo based on how much ammo you have. e.g.  Tesla coil: if you damage this with a weapon, lose all ammo on that weapon.
Though, that kinda encourages people to leave ammo and pick it up later, which I don't think would be fun. Hm. Maybe it mostly appears on a specific map that has an anti-backtracking feature. E.g. a barricaded map where there's no ammo pickups lying around before the end, and all crates and stuff specifically spawn in 1-wide hallways so you can't walk around their pickups. That might be a bit much to add for just this idea, though.

Creating occasional situations where the player has to engage enemies from multiple directions rather than baiting from a hallway

A very simple idea is just. Hallways are sometimes 2 spaces wide. Might be hard to program for the generation, though.

Level with an anti-backtracking enemy??? An enemy that spawns in the same room as you, can't be killed, but is stunned for several turns when you shoot it. Might work together with tesla coil.

Mimic explosive creates? Look like explosive crates, but when the player goes to the next room after them, they grow legs and start following after a few turns. They still function like explosive crates, before and after they start moving.

Animations
The pistol feels feels much less snappy than everything else, particularly when you use it from a distance. I got used to it, but it stood out at the beginning.
Revealing a room animation is slightly delayed, if feels like players are supposed to walk 1 step further than they have to, then eventually figure out they don't need to. If it's intentional, that's fine.
Player damage animation is maybe a little too easy to miss.

Played one more run to be sure of these feelings. 
I experienced another off-screen explosion, but this one didn't kill me and happened when I was a few steps away from the hallway to that room.

Bug: I got a water level where the key is unavailable. There's just a closed door. Not sure if I actually moved up to the door or not. But yeah I didn't notice any key even though I killed everything. And the mushroom exit was really close to the entrance.

Bug: if you're standing in the area a spike can move into, and you shoot, you hit something in your own position?? Which is probably the spike's hitbox which doesn't retract with its hurtbox?

Bug: floaty boss was shown behind an explosive crate he'd dropped. (during phase 1)

Triggered a few eggs and let them hatch. Didn't let the spawned enemy get close to me, though. I like that they can trigger both from damage and walking close.

Didn't encounter any witches or flamers.

Ended up dying to second phase of the boss because I was playing too fast and lost count of how long it was since the last attack. But it was looking easy up until then, that's why I was playing fast. 

Potential bug: I feel like I saw the boss spawning 2 troopers in the same corner and they ended up inside each other. May have been part of why it felt easy, they never really came near me.

Maybe the boss would be more interesting with a smaller room, so the troopers spawn closer to the player.

This is generally a neat idea well executed. 

I finished one run. I didn't let the egg hatch, or encounter any secrets.

Bugs:

I died out of nowhere to a fanatic when revealing a dark room. I'm aware that the trigger for revealing rooms is 1 step further away (it triggers when you're adjacent to the invisible thing that the weapon detects as a target?) I may have pressed forward one time too many, not sure. Or maybe the fanatic exploded early because they were stuck, and that detonated an explosive barrel or killed me directly somehow???? 

Sometimes the dark room revealing wave doesn't spread to certain places? Like it's blocked by objects or enemies or something.

Criticism:

The water level is a bit unpleasant to look for loot on. Might be intentional that it's hard, since it's cluttered and similar color to loot. But it wasn't really hard, just unpleasant.

The floaty guy boss seems pretty cheeseable, I easily stayed in the first phase long enough to get a decent amount of ammo.

I didn't really find much use for the syringe.

I think the new buried laser enemy mostly makes the game easier since you can run them out of ammo and you can bait them into shooting each other for loot. 

I only encountered like one witch and maybe three flamethrowers. I like the idea of the witch pulling you into difficult situations, could be neat to have an enemy type or object that does something similar in a more predictable way. Like consumable booster arrows that launch you in a direction when you step on them, that are often positioned to launch you into a room. Or a weaker enemy similar to the witch that just has the pull ability and maybe a melee attack that it can't use immediately after pulling.  Or an object that causes you to spawn fire behind you when you walk as long as you're within a certain range of it.

I encountered the witch in a room that didn't have very many enemies, and I initially got pulled up against a wall. So it was a tense encounter because I didn't know what to expect, but ultimately it didn't amount to much. I don't think I took damage. They might be cooler usually.

Ah, yeah. I've started drawing the sprite that's supposed to be there.

I did remove the number, yes.

They're functional, just placeholder art and how they function isn't explained. I'm going to replace them with arrows.

You're right that I tell them about reactions at the wrong time. I'll walk them through reaction attacks on the next turn instead.

"The player's unit/subordinate seems to be missing. The lines show where they are, but there does not seem to be a sprite there." - At what point did this happen? Orange lines, or black lines?

The health is intentionally hidden because I want people to think of health amounts pretty roughly rather than thinking about exact values, to prevent overthinking. I'm not super committed to it, but I do like it.

The black grid isn't movement, it's to make it easier to see the threat of the selected/hovered character when there's a lot of overlapping ones.

The godot heads and red things are placeholders. They're spawn locations and exits.

I agree that the phase transition where people move around is confusing. I'm trying to make the tutorial part of the story, but that means it's a bit extra confusing while it's unfinished.

It doesn't have to scale well, the enemy's action economy doesn't scale either. It's a boss rush.

I want number of units you deploy to be mostly a matter of taste. More units are useful because of their reaction attacks, but they get in the way of each others' movements, trigger the protagonista's "Necessary Distance" flaw, and it's hard to protect all of them at once. I figure 4-7 will be best for most bosses.

I did just notice I have to make the triangles more visible on action popups, yeah. Not sure about swapping to semicircles, I feel like the tutorial saying what they are will suffice. They used to be semicircles, I changed them to triangles because it was hard to space out the semicircles in a way that's readable at a glance + looks good.

The orange lines are pretty much the most important piece of UI in the game. I'm still working on exactly how to present them, but no, they can't be subtle. And a sorta soft goal for the game is to have a limited palette, so I'd like to avoid transparency. 

The action economy is also a really important part of the design. I want the player to think about actions as ways to manipulate the situation, usually not ways to directly make progress. There's a reason your attacks all deal 1 damage and your reactions deal 3-5.

There's three phases to the boss.  

I just patched to try and make the board + the resources that determine what actions characters can take clearer.

Actions cost white triangles from the top right (command), and sometime orange inverted "r" shapes on the acting characer's health bars (reactions). 

Color coding on the ranges is yeah what kind of thing they target, including like dark blue (don't care, it's aiming or something), and orange (any character). It's kind of a holdover from a previous UI that showed multiple ranges at once, which sucked. I've cut them down to 3 (move, aim threat, affect character), and might cut them further. Maybe instead have a couple different shapes on the symbols that show which positions you can click.

Not going to have time to move the tutorial into the game this jam, though.

Conclusion: I need a tutorial.

I'm glad you think so!
Definitely going to have a bit of a tutorial introducing mechanics more slowly with fewer characters. The plan is 5 bosses, so there's time for that.

Not gonna change commit button to instant. It's the one thing you can do that can't be rewinded, so it should be hard to press by accident.
I can probably make it clearer though, circular bar that fills up or something. Maybe it starts partly filled and filling quickly. Not sure about End turn. Commit feels more right for the themes of the game. If there's a tutorial section where it tells the player what to do for like a turn, it'll tell them to press and hold it, and then they'll know.

Do you have any concrete thoughts of how to simplify the UI? Other than like. Making the cards smaller, and probably reducing the number of colors used to show the ranges of different abilities.

I did play through the tutorial again.

My Q and E swap was wrong - the ship was upside down at the time. I was supposed to swap W and S instead.

I know about the thrust and agility bars, they're just very off to the side and easy to miss.

Played first level and died to a big thing. A few last issues.

At the end of the tutorial, I ended up with a very low-damage laser that clears armor effectively and has very short range, together with a long-ranged, slow-firing missile with tracer. Killing enemies was painfully slow. Like I needed to pass the weakest enemies around 3 times to kill them. I feel like it shouldn't be possible to screw yourself like that with equipment choices you make in the tutorial.

Couldn't pick up equipment after the first warp. Even if my ship physically goes through them.
a shield and an engine. Then later some more equipment in the same area that I didn't see the first time.
The area was the overlapping area between two beacons. The first two items appeared before I had killed many enemies. Maybe they started spawned, or spawned when I interacted with the beacons. Killing all enemies near the beacons didn't let me pick them up.

Indirect control feels much more agile than direct. That might just be that it switches thrust strength to make large turns, though.

Able to target weapons onto an enemy (the big thing) from very far away (850ish) in overview mode but not in normal mode. Part of that might be because it has really high signature.

When you remove the keyboard control in indirect mode, maybe it should switch to direct mode when you do those keyboard inputs? And vise versa maybe - clicking automatically switches to indirect mode with movement towards that position. That bit might need a setting toggle, though.

Saw it in your discord bio, so I played it before the jam. That time, I quit at the end of the tutorial because I thought the green cube that appears on the overview mode was the one I'm supposed to interact with. This time I found the white one.

Last time I didn't notice the control modes and the 1-2-3 to set movement (maybe they weren’t tutorialized or weren't in the game? They help a lot. I haven't used the other camera mode, though.

Posting this as I'm at the end of the tutorial. I'll play a bit more

Pressing the buttons in indirect control mode works weirdly. 
A and D turn you relative to ship. I have no idea what W and S turn you relative to the ship. Q and E do nothing.
I feel like the speed they move your targeting point should be based on like degrees relative to the ship? Not movement in space. If they don't already work like that.

I swapped Q and E with each other, so e.g. E brings the nose of the ship right.

I don’t intuitively know whether I’m thrusting or not. I figure that’s the job of the particles in space, but maybe there should also be some difference to the trail or something. Like trail color and width. Or the trail has a little velocity away from you, so if you turn thrust low, the trail disappears and what there was will fly away from you. I can imagine that being kinda difficult, though. Depending on how you model the trail.

I frequently end up on the wrong side of the ship so my controls become reversed. Maybe it should be clearer which side of the ship is up.

Locking onto an enemy is disorienting, partly because I can't see my own ship.

I feel like it’s intuitive to use indirect control for large-scale maneuvers and turns, and direct control for dodging and precisely moving to positions. This is hampered greatly by the way the indirect control waypoint persists when you deactivate it and then activate it again.

Pressing space while there’s a tutorial popup will unpause. It will also sometimes fill the screen with grey. Not sure exactly how this plays out.

Firstly, excellent that you got that far. I was uncertain whether anyone would in this build.

Endgame isn’t quite a win – it’s the last phase, which has a few special rules that can be read on its tooltip. I’ll have to add some more fanfare to phase transitions so that’s clear. And explain the mechanic in a popup the first time it happens.

You’re right that those symbols are reactions. I’ll try to place those so they’re more on top of the HP bar, so it’s easier to see them regardless of the background. And mention them in the tutorial.

(The rest is noted)

I played through on King. I kinda stopped paying attention to new items in the late game, but early items were very impactful and influenced my decisions a lot. I feel like two early pears and the thing that gives you money for making peasants kinda carried me.

This is really similar to something I played a long time ago. That one had like simulated battles and stuff, whereas I feel like your main standout features of your game are

Relative simplicity. Units just contribute as a defense value, don't die in fights, and upgrades are really simple. I don't consider this bad or good.

The week loop. Things happen on a regular schedule, so you can plan somewhat. I consider this predictability good, you could maybe do some more interesting things with it. Like there's specific additional things that happen at any point in the week, but you're warned at the start of the week.

Quests and events.

Items.
I feel like the game would benefit from making the player consistently think about which items they get and which items they have, throughout the game. 
Generally have items be stronger, more expensive, and fewer. Like divide the number of items someone on average gets through a playthrough by like. At least 4. Low enough that you can actually think about every item. And/or structure the way items are shown more. Like once the player has bought the item that gives +2 stone every day or something, or the item that gives you a day's harvest extra, then chances are they never need to think about that item again, so it's clutter to have items like that together with the actually interesting ones.
Rarely give the player random items, have some fanfare when you do, and have those items be usually worth the fanfare.
Don't take away completely random items. Take away specific, known ones. Or show like 4 different items and offer choices: [lose 1 of those at random and get X], [lose 2 of those at random and get Y], etc. Take away the items they've had the longest, or the ones they just got.
More opportunities to choose between items. Trade away specific items.
If you cut a lot of boring items, maybe add bundles of resources to the shop?

Also the candy feels kinda broken.

If this is the first Matilda level, I was confused by it too because I misunderstood her ability. 

She gets the extra movement and action when she's picked up all three berries (when she shows the smiley), not for each berry she picks up. 

It kinda feels like she's getting back movement and actions when she picks up things, but what's actually happening is that she's out of actions, so the turn ends automatically and her remaining movement is wasted.

I had a ton of ideas for how to improve the UI immediately after submitting, yeah. Just made an update trying to make it work while sticking to the resolution.

Breaking up the actions like that doesn't really make sense for what this game is. I want the action economy to be super limited and shared among all actions and all characters on the player's team, so the player only gets to do the 3-4 most important actions they can think of on most turns.
I think the answer is more to have a section with just 2-3 units instead of 5, so players can learn the basic tactics of using shields to waste the boss's time, while using polearms to prevent him from regenerating and punish him if he tries to get past the shield.

Hell of a blast from the past. Used to play a lot of third person endless running/driving games on Kongregate. No jump and no adjusting speed is interesting.

Feel like it loses a little fairness relative to games like that, because of the complicated environments, tilting perspective, and just, sometimes being on the outside of the environment rather than the inside like in e.g. the Run series.

Maybe the voice is supposed to help with that, but I can't hear what it's saying without making the music and crash noise uncomfortably loud.

Would like options to reduce the camera tilt from steering, and adjust the volume of music/game audio/voice separately?

I'm making a rhythm game and want to ask jam teams for music to use, especially music they made for their game in this jam. This could be considered to slightly influence votes, as stating what other game shares a given piece of music might direct players who like that music towards that game. Am I allowed to use such music? If so, can I state the game/team I got it from?

You probably won't see me adding sound to this directly, but I want to revisit laser blocks as a hazard in a hex roguelike or something. Posted a comment on trying to fix the control scheme above. Might try with controllers if that idea doesn't work.

I'm going to change the controls a bit like I described to Deep-Fold once I'm allowed to upload new files, so be on the lookout for that and tell me what you think about them. I really want to make the 'six keys for six directions' thing work, and use it in other games.

thank you. he does escape in the end.

I notice UHN IKM feels better with the left hand than the right, which makes Z to undo a bit awkward.

I've thought about more of an I I shape rather than the O. e.g numpad 741 963 or TFC ESZ, but I want to use combined inputs for different moves in a different game (e.g. IU for north jump diagonally/cleave attack/reach attack) and that might feel weird to do with TE or 97.