My two cents....

[BurntPubes]

Hey, just wanted to collect my thoughts on the game so far. I've done a few runs with both heroes and a few guides.

Firstly, I love the music, style, and creativity on display with this game. It reminds me of Monster Train meets Into the Breach, which is a great crossroads to find yourself at. It's clear that lots of time has been put into the different effects, abilities, and items. The design of the characters is super charming, the design of the areas evocative, and I like the regional effects like Deep Water and the Resin Pools, all really great. The boss encounter where you have to entomb yourself is great, love seeing stuff like that.

That being said, there are a few small areas that the game could use improvement to really hit the next level of polish. I understand this is a smaller studio, but just thought I'd give my honest feedback on what I found lacking. Please don't take this to mean I don't think the game isn't good as is - it's great!

1 - The visual clarity of a few different places could use some work. What each unit is doing, what effects are resolving, and what pieces on the board are affecting what other pieces could be much more clearly shown. The attacks seems to lack a lot of hit, looking mostly like units spitting mist at each other. Often times a turn will end and I'll have a very hard time following what's happening on the enemy turn. The comparison to Into the Breach is flattering, until you realize that what makes that game work so well is perfect knowledge of what the enemies will be doing in what order, something that's really lacking from Oaken. I'd have a choice of options, and knowing which one would be better would require knowing which enemies are gonna attack first, which effects are going to resolve when, etc. and it's not always clear.
Stuff like being able to visually tell what effects/damage is from Anger and which are from a Counterattack, which will trigger first, etc. Maybe a system of symbols to flash when certain actions happen, or even an action log would help with this.
Even areas like leveling up your units could benefit from some more clarity on what's changing. It took me 3 runs to realize that wisps also added a stat bonus, but maybe I'm alone in that haha.

2 - Keyword effects can be unclear. Embers and their related keywords in particular took a lot of trial and error before I found out what they were doing and how they were working. I appreciate the effort made so far, but some cleaning and tightening up needs to be done. Defender should mention that it gives the 'Provoke' status on enemies in their Frontal Arc, for example.

3 - A little polish on the loading screens (often sudden and a little jarring, when a slow fade to black and back in may work better) and the in-battle damage numbers/font (look a little rough and default) would go a long way.

4 - For some keywords and abilities, you can see all the information (like 'XXX is a 2/1 creature') but for some others like some boss abilities, it mentions summoning some units but I can't see what they are. Adding an enemies section to the Collection would go a long way here.

Other misc. stuff that's more taste than anything.
- I'd like it if the trinkets were a little more impactful than slight buffs to my hero, or small environmental effects
- I find a lot of the shrines aren't worth going out of your way to grab
- I'd prefer it if the upgrades for spells and skills would be a selection of a larger pool of different paths, and if they could be upgraded more than once

Overall, the game is in pretty great shape, and I like a lot of what's going on, but I did find it just a little frustrating to wrestle with some of these issues, and feel they could be ironed out to make for a super smooth experience, somewhat closer to Into the Breach or Monster Train in terms of readability.

Thanks for reading!

[BurntPubes]

Another example:
If I put a 'Awake: pulls a unit in it's central LOS towards itself' wisp on a unit that has 'Awake: pushes adjacent units away', it's impossible to tell if that's a good idea, or if it just won't activate. Will it push all others away, and then pull a unit? Or will it pull a unit into itself and then push it away?

[Wu]

Thanks BurntPubes this is hell of a god feedback haha, we really apprecaite your thoughts. Some of these issues are being worked on actually and will see the light of day in the future updates. If you want to discuss some specific details a better place for that is our Discord channel: https://discord.gg/nWXfqKZvZR where not only me but also game mechanics designers engage in discussions.

Glad you had some fun with Oaken too!

[Koops]

Yes, I have to agree 100% with you on your first point. I just had an encounter where I had to protect all Nib*lets and I lost the optional objective because an enemy just decided to kill one. I didn't even know it was targeting it since a different enemy was next to a Nib*let previously but didn't attack it during its turn before. It just feels cheap.

And to the developer, not everyone wants to join a discord channel just to provide feedback. A bunch of indie developers do this and it just clutters up the discord channel list if we were to join each one. I understand the convenience but it should not be a requirement. We have these steam discussion places for a reason.

Edit: Weird that Steam censors the name Nib*let

[Wu]

This is not a requirment, I try to deliver all feedback to our devs but since we are a super small studio we prefer to keep discussion in our Discord : ) But if you feel like posting it here, it's also appreciated. Take care

[invi]

Just trying this game out and thought I'd come here to second the point about things being unclear. I feel like I desperately need some sort of action log that tells me which units have done what. Enemy turns resolve so fast that I really can't process what's happening and that makes it really hard to learn and adapt.