It's more general feeling from a quick first try, sorry but I'll only list the negative, I gave up before to understand fully how play the game, don't forget that I'm quite fan of Steam Marines 1, so sure SM2 interest me. And don't take it personally, I'm that sort of guy who love swim in negativity. :-P

• At first play attempt, I failed understand fully how play the game.
• It's not Steam Punk, please don't repeat the error, it's rather hard to explain/justify when I try explain how good is SM1.
• The music doesn't fit and changes between genres that don't fit, sometimes it was like evoking western, sometimes like some club music, sometimes it was like a torn electronic music. I'm not a video game music expert, so I could have a bizarre opinion on that. It also made me realize that I have no clue if there's any music genre that could evoke Steam Punk genre.
• The UI is a lot too huge, I can understand the plan of a future port to mobile, but it's too much.
• Galaxy map, you'll need choose between:
  •  it's just a map allowing select locations/missions, then it's more no ships movements but only locations to choose, each location need quite more information with tooltip
  • or it's space travel but then with a full interesting gameplay, not just move ships around some locations and then to a location.
• It seems player can customize only one character the commander, but game starts with 4 marines, and the three others aren't introduced. It's weird and it feels like a regression from SM1.
• Make commander a special marines that can't die, I don't know, this has a lot of consequences.
• Only three active skills isn't this a regression when compared to SM1?
• The game isn't fully playable with mouse.
• Move or guard? I'm skeptical about this gameplay approach.
• I had a marines killed/hurt and had no clue why, my only bet is it's was through a wall.
• There's doors, I failed find how open them.
• I failed find how shoot, select body seems never work.
• The sounds are a nice/important addition, I felt a few was fine, but overall it was needing more work. I'll feedback this more in detail through another play attempt.
• Failed find how turn,
• The game needs a lot more tooltips.
• No portraits bars for a party/squad tactical game? I don't remember any single good game with such combats not using portraits, and it's not working well.
• Failed find how open map
• The trick of camera movements for most aliens movements, is generating a too long alien phase. SM2 should use a more global hint, for aliens out of vision field of marines.

I remember a positive, there's more than one, but they have been overwhelmed by negative feelings. So the positive I remind is the ability to generate marine name, that's cool. :-)

Ok job done, constructive criticism, some negative, and some positive. :-D This feedback is very superficial because it's only a quick attempt to play the game and not insist much.

Hi, Dploorrt.

I'll try and go through your list and give you some answers and the general direction SM2 is going in.

There should be an option to downsize the UI in the settings. The galaxy map is implemented the way it is to accommadate specific gameplay features that are not yet implemented.

You can customize most of the marines that is not the Commander/player, excluding stats like Aggression. You can still change the name, portrait, and gear of each marine (according to their class).

You have a few questions about the gameplay that make me unsure how to answer you. You can play 95% of the game purely with the mouse, I believe the only functionalities that requires the keyboard is entering marine names, panning the camera, and issuing Delhi space strikes. Panning the camera can mostly be accomplished via cycling between marines and the camera orbit buttons on the bottom right, although that's clearly not the exact same functionality.

Three active skills is a game design constraint because there are other options each marine has that they didn't have in SM1, specifically door opening triggers and a larger pool of abilities each marine can acquire. Between class weapon effects, head/body targeting, and the potential pool of abilities, there are far more options a SM2 marine has than a SM1 marine did.

Quite a few people have expressed a desire for the full squad portrait on the tactical field and is something I am reworking at the moment.

---

I am not sure if there is an issue with your download/install, because there are quite a few tooltips implemented, including how to open doors (of you mouse over them), so possibly you should reinstall the game?

Thanks for the care, yes for the doors tooltips I don't know myself either, it's bizarre I didn't notice them, the second feedback is more careful.