My impression of the new demo

[Tubulin]

Overall I think there is something there, although the demo does feel very rushed and missing a lot of quality of life and general functionalities. Some small stuff like an actual start wave button instead of using the fast forward button, A wave indicator as it is not always clear if a wave has ended. More importantly, I would really like to have tool tips for what type of damage a tower does, like does it have an AoE, what is the attack rate, does it do chain damage etc. No such information is available upon creating tower. You can get a feeling for it as you experiment and play the game, but it should be available to the player from the beginning. There are also issues regarding equipment, it is not necessary clear what item leads to further iteam upgrades, like I got a wizard hat that reduces cooldown and I assume it can be equiped on the wizard but I cannot see this item be available for the wizard and I have found no item that actually allows me to equip it.

Further, I do like the tower skill tree system and the general upgrade system in the home base. However, I do feel a respec ability is needed as healing becomes only relevant in the later stage of the demo. Unless you invested heavily into healing abillities early on, it is very difficult to get good healing towers and you end up having to spam quite a lot of bsaic healing tower which limits the amount of damage output overall making it a very delicate process of balancing healing towers vs damage towers. In some way, I find myself grinding experience just to try and upgrade some of the healing abilities, which is not very fun. Additionally, it would be nice to know other things such as if effects can stack such as the banners and healing circles, as well as if I choose a "reduce cooldown" skill in the skill tree, does it affect colldowns for all abilities of that tower or is it limited to the specific ability the skill is associated with?

As I have played and developed strategies, I do find the waves engaging and interesting enough, but why are the golden rats able to instant kill you even if you ahve not lost any health so far? This might be the biggest killer of my enjoyment, making it to the later waves flawlessly, just to see a single golden rat make it past my defenses without enough currency to buy additional towers and then end my run. The ability to instant kill you should be reserved to final bosses, not some special enemy that is common enough in many of the waves.

Lastly, I have to say I have enjoyed my time with the demo. I have spent approximately 4 - 5 hours and I truly think there is something there as I wouldnt have spent that amount of time on it otherwise, There seems to be a lot left to do with regards to UI, and maybe some minor tweeks to the enemeies (primarily removing the golden rats ability to insta kill, make it remove 5 health or something like that) but I think at the core there is a fun tower defense in there.

[vinon]

the item upgrade in the shop is random, love this,