itch.io

Idea for a pred: one that is able to level up an unlimited number of times, something like 3/3 for 3 energy. Starts very weak but scales up. I suspect this would be a weaker scaling strategy than something like Nexxi or Mobi, given the number of copies you can have is inherently limited and it would require a big energy investment compared to those, so to make it more viable, each level could also raise their maximum capacity by the same amount, allowing them to potentially scale bigger than any other pred if you have enough to stack up. Would have some synergy with Plum and Seraph, potentially.

On the repeated proposition of pred-on-pred, while having a pred who can eat the others is understandably a no-go, having one that can be eaten by others could be valid. Basically a pred who can be "leveled up" into any other pred, transferring their stats over. Could make for a fun strat paired with a pred that removes rules from prey- basically letting that pred indirectly gain the effects from beneficial prey like Mufi, Sachiho and Angel. An option could be the ability to play them on a seated pred for a small buff, so the card isn't completely dead if you draw them late.

Alternatively, there could be some way to "pick them up" from their seat and feed them to another seated pred, but that would probably be finicky to implement.

A switch prey could also be possible, one that gives more points for each other prey in the belly (to represent them "eating" the other occupants).

As a fan of tactics games, I've wanted to make a game much like this myself. I love this concept, but I feel it could be executed in a somewhat less frustrating manner.

In its current state, the gameplay feels... painfully slow, which I think is a result of several factors-

First and foremost, the movement and rangefinding not processing diagonals is not very intuitive and also seriously slows down the game. I would recommend switching to a path-based system, one that determines the distance the character can move based on a radius from them rather than a specific number of tiles moved, allowing for travel and attacking in non-cardinal directions. Attacks would also benefit from this, since being diagonally adjacent to a foe and yet unable to hit them is very irritating and comes up far more often thanks to the clunky movement range.

Of course, this issue is exacerbated by the game being very melee-focused in nature; naturally, characters need to be next to something to swallow it, which inherently skews the game towards melee engagements, which are very clunky and cluttered thanks to the necessity of being in strict cardinal directions from targets.

In general, because the game is naturally going to focus so much on close-range engagements, I would strongly suggest the addition of movement-based abilities. For example, Schroedinger's pounce actually moving her past obstacles to a destination rather than being a simple ranged attack.

I would even suggest implementing a universal "sprint" action, akin to XCOM or Mario + Rabbids, letting the player give up a unit's attack/ability action in exchange for moving twice as much on a turn. Having such an ability cuts out a lot of down time where the player is just slowly walking units into position and hitting the wait command until they finally get close enough to engage an enemy. Coupled with being able to attack and move diagonally, I think that would go a very long way to making this game feel much more satisfying and well-paced.

I have a number of other suggestions and critiques on smaller things, like the questionable utility of certain units or the rather obscene and irritating abilities of the Dusk Lamia, but I would say that improving pathing, targeting and movement as a whole would be a massive boon to the game in the long run.