Hey, just finished the playtest with all three characters. I enjoyed the main mechanics (build/synergy chasing, item grid management), but at the end I wasn't really engaged and made a final push to beat it so I could give proper feedback. I'll focus on the negative in the hopes that it will help your work, but know that as a whole the game was fun for me.
- Having to watch all items taking effect one by one before every battle is tiring, specially since the order of appliance hardly matters and, when it does, it's not clear how to manipulate it.
- If the order matters (e.g. percentages being applied only on the value previously set), there should be an intuitive way to change the order of the items. If it doesn't, I don't see an advange to watching the items apply one by one.
- It was hard for me to keep up with what was happening in the battles. Not sure if the reason is the small size of the units, the high concentration of units, the amount of effects in play, or just my brain power, but it was hard to learn about the effectivess of my build by watching a battle unfold.
- The game made me want to do more grid management than I was able to. I believe it was the lack of positional synergies, item rotation and combination options between items, which are fun mechanics that Backpack Battles spoiled me with.
- I don't know if the game is already at the stage of balancing, but if it is, there is a steep power difference between the battles and the snake boss of the second act. I could be melting normal and hard encounters and still die leaving the snake with more than half of it's health.
A positive highlight is that I felt rewarded for experimenting with several builds and combinations of units. It was fun and clear that I was getting better at the game, not on the moment-to-moment (point 2 above), but by my overall progress on each run.
Thanks for the opportunity to play your game and I hope you are proud of your work. All the best!