Interesting Slow-Paced RTS (Demo Feedback)

[Thanik]

I've tried to keep my feedback split into two parts: My impression playing the demo, and one where I'll leave suggestions. That said, in practice this'll mean a few things are reiterated. Thank you in advance for putting up with how disorganized & long this'll inevitably be; making it brief would take a lot more time than I'm willing to put in editing this.

Observations

The Tutorial

• The tutorial was a little heavy-handed; it would've felt better imo if the prompts/info panels between playable portions were displayed at the same time (e.g. displaying the Hub, Ore Field + Mine, Minimap, Objective, Resource panel (top), & Build menu pop-ups could've been displayed together). The reminder icons on the map are good enough to reiterate anything that was missed, but would also benefit from displaying more information. as (right now) they only show the most direct pop-up tied to the thing in question (e.g. Ore Field doesn't show the pop-up for Mines). The order of buildings produced early on is also a little odd. Having the player build Mines, then Solar, then Pylons is a little unnecessary: Solar can be made last without issue, and would lead to less confusion; the player can already see the Mines are unpowered. Something mentioning the Pylons don't need to cover every tile of the building would be handy for inexperienced players.
  
  
• The tutorial Calyx was extremely easy to kill due to how late it starts growing, to the point where it didn't teach the player much beyond "shoot this when in range"; at most it'll teach the player to have units keep a bubble clear while a few pick away at the Calyx. I only discovered destroying roots was the most effective way to clear areas of plantlife while observing static artillery fire in the example level. Ideally, the player should have to wall himself in and push in from there, to set

The Example Level

• The example level is interesting, with well-placed chokepoints and elevation differences to showcase the combat system. The enemy spread rate does a good job of emulating the rush you feel scrambling to prepare defenses in Creeper World, which I assume was a major source of inspiration, but the way the units / defenses / economy come together definitely needs polishing to click into place.
  
  
• I think it's fun that you have to gauge what type of plant you want growing where. I'd definitely play into this more when designing levels, even from very early on. A larger number of Calyxes that grow slower, or have different interactions at the border region, would be interesting to interact with.
  
  
• I'm a huge fan of the end-screen having an interactive minimap recap. Really makes you appreciate how the level played out. Wish I could save that, personally.

My Approach

• On my first attempt, I spawned by the ore patch between the bottom left ore patch and the westmost Calyx and had the starting units neutralize it with enough time left to move over to the bottom rightmost chokepoint to hold off the eastmost Calyx from entering the suggested spawn area. I walled off the chokepoints west & north of my starting position, walled the large area east of there, and mounted turrets while I expanded my economy; this was a little tight to set up, but would've held on fine indefinitely with periodic repair done to the turrets and periodic juggling of how many Mines were turned on. By the time I felt comfortable constructing the tech building, I was arguably economically secure enough to do anything (but still lacked power). I researched advanced power and substations first, replaced my starting array, then directly went for both static and mobile artillery, then the rest of the technologies.
  
  
• My first thought was that the intended way to advance was to have a small number of units push forward, secure an area for pylons to be built on, then hold it down with static defenses. Due to the ranged plants, the long build time / inability of in-construction buildings to take damage, & how unpredictable & relatively tanky rooted plant growth is, this simply wasn't very feasible, as pylons+static defenses would advance at a crawl and would need a lot of micro to repeatedly replace.
  
  In hindsight, the only reason why I don't think building the static defenses + walls was a mistake, despite objectively being more of a nuisance to manage than the units necessary to defend the same area in choke points, is because they don't need babysitting:
  - The targeting logic means you need multiple units on a small area to prevent "leaking" growth. Walls allow less machine guns to hold a section of the map than would be needed in light tanks. Judging how many you need is not hard science, but if you get it right you don't even need walls.
  - Machine guns have higher HP than light/heavy tanks, throw a notification when damaged (units do not, despite being able to move into cover / away from damage; this also makes leaks riskier for large walls of units), and can be repaired from the start (units need to be replaced, which entails travel time on top of the issue of noticing when one is going to die).
  
  
• My pushes mostly ended up consisting of mobile artillery breaking roots ahead, then light tanks moving forward to grab the newly free land and let the artillery advance to where they can fire at the next branching point (with artillery needing micro to make any kind of advancement possible, since their default priority is any target in range).

Thoughts on units, buildings, etc.

• Units in general all felt bad when trying to get out of growth. It doesn't do a lot of damage, but anything stuck in it is basically as good as dead (e.g. they might lack range to free themselves, or the growth keeps intercepting them due to the rapid spread). What this boils down to is the player being overly cautious & deaths themselves being boring. Units should more easily get out; the real threat is not being able to stop the spread and it reaching your stationary buildings.
  
  
• After the initial rush to get defenses up, the Calyx is not a threat. There needs to be more 'shades' of how dense it is, roots shouldn't be so omnipresent, and dense growth needs to be a significant threat (while not being impossible to stop). This opens up for more energy-intense static defenses & unit upgrades.
  
  
• Heavy tanks felt awkward to use: Currently, it works well enough keeping purple root/dense plants away (so eg. ranged plants don't spawn), but they're extremely expensive. They couldn't clear *themselves* if stuck in growth, couldn't keep a choke clear alone, and were very easy to 'overextend' without micro even in mixed armies, and ultimately didn't have a long enough range to really shine in the playthrough for actual advancement.
  
  
• Static artillery felt (mostly) useless. Initially, I assumed it'd be the answer to ranged plants, or a mid-game transition from holding the line to crawling forward, but neither really hold up: it doesn't outrange the ranged plants (and thus is even liable to get sniped if something else isn't placed down to draw aggro) and can't be aimed manually (to prioritize roots / ranged plants in crucial locations). Getting heavy tanks is a better stopgap until you can afford mobile artillery, and getting the power upgrades is a bigger prio.
  
  
• The launch pad's delay between animation & gold arriving felt awkward. Ideally, it should give gold as soon as it launches, and the cost-benefit of gold vs ore, gold income, etc. needs to be reevaluated for units / tech.
  
  
• The production booster only felt useful for super late, when you could use it to boost empty mine production from 6 to 9 ore/min (and stop worrying about the deposits). The inability to place Mines where there's no ore felt unnecessarily limiting for scaling up this kind of production. I don't think there'd ever be a reason to research it before that; it can easily be replaced with a (slower-than-mine) infinite ore production building, which can be balanced around power use.
  
  
• By the point you can afford either of substations / advanced solar, you can afford the other one easily too and power ceases to be a concern; you never need more power after the initial ~24 solar (3x8 in prep for substations, easy to upgrade), and if you do it's to power more economic buildings (which means you can afford the increase in capacity easily).

Suggestions

• The game lacks some basic QOL necessary to enjoy it at a higher level; a lot of it comes down to things that increase necessary micromanagement without adding fun:
  
• Coherent (and configurable) hotkeys. The most important are changing game speed (outside pausing), reseting the viewport, changing the viewport to a top-down perspective, opening & selecting from the production/build menu, find/select for buildings/units.
  
• The building system could use a bit more visual clarity. An option to keep a visible placement grid at all times, and having the grid extend over the visible portion of the screen (the limited area around buildings currently in the game usually isn't enough for more extensive planning). Pylons should show the extent of their power coverage at all times when being placed, even if not in range of power (and in a way that can be distinguished from already existing pylons---for cases where you want overlapping coverage).
  
• Intuitive drag-building. When placing a single building, holding down the left mouse button should create a line of buildings adjacent to each other (out to either the mouse, or however much you can afford---whichever is lower) that require a second click as confirmation to place down. Pylons should extend from the furthest point of the previous Pylon's coverage. Right now, only Walls can be placed down by dragging, and it is virtually impossible to do so accurately due to the placement registering immediately on reaching an open space.
  
• At least an option for more detailed info regarding units and buildings. Hovering over buildings / units in the build/production menu should provide more concrete information. Units should have detailed statistics regarding their training time, damage output, range, movement speed, HP, and other relevant metrics, while buildings should note their production speed (e.g. 60 Ore/min for a Mine, 18 Power for Solar), power consumption, grid size (e.g. 4x4 for the Mine, 3x3 for Solar); both buildings and units should note where to unlock them, if locked (right now there's only the one building, but this can easily become confusing in the future)
  
• At least an option to have a global production queue somewhere on the screen. This helps with cancelling units without unnecessary micro (looking for the particular production building they're being made in) and informs the player's decision-making (awareness of what's being trained, time until units come out & what number, etc.) Likewise for technologies being researched.
  
• Control groups should be visible somewhere on the screen. Possibly with a number denoting the number of units / buildings in the group.
  
• Walls could be able to stack vertically. Verticality will add a dimension to stopping the growth; perhaps growth of different density could only reach a certain height, roots couldbe slower to develop, and could actively tunnel the foundation of a wall and dig through; ramps/elevators could be made to more easily traverse terrain.
  
• Buildings in the process of being constructed shouldn't be instantly destroyed, or there should be a way to neutralize ranged attacks. Alternatively, ranged attacks should have a much smaller range and lower damage, but r
  
• Pylons should connect to one another, so there's a visual indication of which ones are within range of each other.
  
• Total battery capacity and total ore storage capacity need to have a number on hover (or otherwise accessible to the player).
  
• All unit types should be available from the start, with accessibility determined by cost. Technology should upgrade them so they're more effective at their intended role.
  
• Units should have a power capacity (so they can fire for some time away from power, but need to resupply). This will increase the worth of static defenses & encourage players to continuously build infrastructure as they approach their goal instead of the game loop dropping base building as soon as you get an army capable of safely advancing and taking out the Calyxes. It also opens up the game to logistics vehicles.
  
• There needs to be something to fight for on the map other than ore. in Creeper World, you're fighting both for more production (which isn't as big of a factor here, because the deposits aren't infinite so the game can't be balanced to require large scaling) and for Redon/Greenar/Bluite you need for the more advanced buildings/units. This wouldn't be an issue if both players were competing over who could harvest more, or were both resource limited, but in the current concept the asymmetry makes for repetitive gameplay.

Closing

I think the idea is promising, and I like the art direction of the game, but it's very much unpolished and missing core gameplay. I'm excited to see where you guys go with it. Best of luck!

[Studio568]

Thanks for your thoughtful feedback! We're collating all the suggestions, and we'll use them as part of our decision making going forward.