Oaken 9+

There is a good game in here somewhere!

Love the aesthetic and feel, the 3D avatars are difficult to see but whatever. There is so much potential here. The mechanics of gameplay are interesting and fit very well in the genre. The idea of a 2D battlefield is also very cool. I really want to give this 5 stars, However the damage and fatigue mechanics are horribly broken and unbalanced. Too many of the opposing enemies are waay to powerful and numerous and even if you upgraded the health of some units (expensive and difficult) they are one-shotted when attacked or even when defending. You can get a good flow going, but there are so many unpredictable enemy abilities it is impossible to strategize and build a “deck” that is reliable. If you go for defense and health mechanics, you can barely cause any damage in higher levels. The exposure, weakness, and delayed damage are waaay to frequent and you have 2-4 enemies that can cause these issues starting on every field which makes it extremely difficult to even get past turn 1-2 without already being screwed.
Additionally, there are too many “map”quirks and “terrain” mechanics which make it difficult to develop any strategy as they change wildly and frequently from level to level.

The Fatigue mechanic is also broken. The fact that in some battles, not only do your units lose health, but lose permanent max health to boot, essentially making them useless for the remaining run. You can cure it, but it takes a lot of resources and in some elite battles every unit has the ability to fatigue. So you cant upgrade units as the resources go toward making their already laughably low health stay at a barely functioning level.

Recommendation to the developer:
1. Balance the fatigue. I am okay with the idea, but tone it back. Maybe make all units cured of all fatigue with one heal, not one per health unit. Perhaps for every 3 fatigue accumulated, you lose one max health something to even it out as it makes the game less enjoyable when I can barely make it through one round and have no upgraded forces.

As for card use fatigue, the two uses and done makes plenty of sense for units, but for spells make it 3-4 uses. Maybe damage reduces after 2 uses and exhausted after 4. But sometimes there are 9 turn games with a super slow introduction of 6-9 units and you have to use spells as it can be difficult to kill some stronger enemies without it and risk having to spend a ton of resources after the round to get spell access back.

2. Cut the retaliation damage in half. It is crazy that when defending, units cause full damage in their LOS. I understand getting behind units they have no retaliation, but the reality of the gameplay makes that very difficult to achieve and you usually have to have one unit take a hit and likely being sacrificed in order to position correctly.

3. Increase health. Even one to two HP higher per unit makes all the difference. This allows for more maneuvering and taking advantage of the units abilities to win. Currently a unit has maybe one to two turns before it will be killed by retaliation or otherwise and basically you can only count on one use of an ability.

4. Not every enemy needs status effects. Every enemy unit has something. When each round can have 9 enemy units and fatigue etc carries over it makes it very difficult to make it through stages. There is a tiered enemy system make the lowest tier without abilities. You can then even increase enemy number to balance the difficulty and allow for strategy of destroying the fodder and specialty targeting the advanced units with skills to win.

5. Consider reworking the terrain mechanics. In some battles it is interesting and is a huge benefit, but when so many of the maps have sweeping terrain effects it becomes tiresome and reduces the replayability.

Just some thoughts. With a good balancing, this is a game I would play often akin to slay the spire or pirates outlaws

Please fix the controls

When you press the screen with your finger, the cursor goes off to the upper left. And this game requires precision

Developer Response ,

Hello! Thanks for the feedback.
Quick question, is it off by a few, or is the cursor goign way off to the upper left corner of the screen?