Hey Nerdook! Bugs and thoughts

[Compliant]

Hey Nerdook! I'm a fan of your games and this one is no exception. I'm sitting here, thinking "I've already done everything" but STILL playing it because it is so fun and designed so well, and you've already come out with an expansion adding neato-content? You rock!!

I think this game, and your game development in the future, has _so_ much potential. Because you've given me _so_ much happiness here, I'm going to take the time to give my opinion on some bugs, issues, and gameplay mechanics even though you will probably never read it or respond. I say this while disclaiming that I am not the developer, I am merely the art appreciator and my interpretation is but one of many; my only relevant skill is determining why I, myself, like something and if there is a chance that you will be helped by it in any way than I will take the time to share my thoughts.

Ok here we go, in my own personal order of importance...

Your primary "additive replay value" element is the five bonus "rewards" you choose to keep in ng+. I'm not sure if you realize that additive replay value is THE crucial gameplay element to the addictive qualities of crazy successful roguelike games like Dark Souls and The Binding Of Isaac (to me, at least ^^'). In regards to additive replay value issues and suggestions:

1. I'm unable to see what rewards I already have when I choose a new one. This kills me, since I forget what my plan was for this playthrough, pick a goblin perk when I meant to go all dark elf because I picked up this game a day later, and it "ruins" my playthrough; I should not have to be taking notes as to what I'm picking in game, I should have all the information available when I make a decision, right? This is compounded by...

2. Sometimes the rewards you are offered are identical to you ng+ chosen rewards. _So_ frustrating, as I'll pick one I already have accidentally, it provides NO additional bonus, wastes a slot, Gah.

3. You HAVE to give me more than a single ng+ playthrough. Ok you don't have to...I think it's a very interesting choice to give me merely five things to take with me to next game. It fits very well for a 3-4 playthrough life of your game...but I want more than that!! I'd appreciate only ONE reward each time if I was able to keep adding one forever; God I'd play your game every day until I've mastered everything and then pray that there's an ultimate boss/reward at the end of the tunnel. Which brings me to the next point...

4. Difficulty! Not enough of it! I can take the weakest, unupgraded units through the entire game and I do; why? because there's no hard mode. I've prioritized this fourth because the things above are killing me, but if you only fixed this I'd be happy. I don't care if you do something lazy like add 50% to enemy health; there's just nowhere for me to go when I can beat 5 enemies with only the spider queen and kill the red queen in the "destined to lose fight" three times in a row...which leads me to...

5. Killing the red queen in the first fight would be an AMAZING segway into "hard mode" wouldn't it? I actually expected it, since it seems possible. So many classic game ultimate moments come from winning the fight "that must be lost". This is a STRATEGY game where you can choose to start with your five fav playstyle abilities; it's BEGGING to let you win that first queen fight.

Those are my "big five". They would make this game a 40 play through game instead of a 5 play through game to me and I'd even consider buying DLC to a game with that depth. Now to more minor things...

6. The command party (The revenant king and princess group) CANNOT be viable no matter how much perks you put into it and even against militia/hero units that they are supposed to counter. When you play this game you identify with those units; the story identifies you as the father which is a flippin' awesome design choice. So one feels the choices are to enhance the minions or to enhance the command party, a choice that is validated by your failure options when you choose who to leave someone behing in the losing red queen fight early on. Then...you are punished for your love of the revenant king and princess, because either unit can be one-shot even with EVERY upgrade possible for them. If you spend the effort to collect every upgrade, even using your ng+ benefit, they should not be weaker than the comparable Warlock/Death Knight group. I noticed this is less of a case in the expansion and we can get a bird now...perhaps you've already addressed it. I just sorely want them to be the most powerful unit in the game if you have devoted yourself to upgrading them...at least as strong as 1.5x the other units. Isn't that fair? As is, the spider queen or poison rat unit could take 4 of the command party in a fight!

7. Estimated damage to enemy units is frequently inaccurate; I did not do an indepth analysis, but it seems like while maybe it doesn't take some factors into account and that could be intentional, it definitely straight up fails on some units. There are two types of strategy games; those with random damage and random factors and those where you are sure what is going to happen; this game certainly appears to be the latter, so this appears to be a straight-up bug.

8. Poison, and units in general, are unbalanced. The spider queen, poison spider summons, the flesh golem, and omg rat bros, are able to simply rock everybody. The rat bros poison regen shouldn't be so much better than vampire bats (which badly need a buff) and ghouls, while they also do more damage. This game feels like it tried to make several paths equal but different, so this feels like a generic balancing issue. Since playing your new patch, however, things like the weakness of undead units feels like it's been patched up; I'll keep playing, perhaps my review is ill timed in some respects given the patch.

9. Why are my undead archers all turning into undead warriors when dying? I have no idea. Something wierd is happening and either it is intentional and not clear, or a bug. I'll keep taking notes of new patch bugs, I think other abilities are misfiring in my favor and it cheeses things for me.

10. The first choice in the game is what of the three ally paths you choose; the wizard path is the spells + undead path; work with it. People are going to WANT to focus on the command party/undead; reward them for this. Make it possible to achieve all the undead rewards through the warlock specific quests. Also, make it possible to focus on a path entirely a bit more easily; I'm playing three different times to achieve all three siren/vampire bat/rat bro/etc bonuses...make it worth my time!! Again, this needs more than a single ng+ reward/difficulty!

Anyway, that's more then enough for one post. My email is [e-mail], I'm happy to share all my thoughts and newly found bugs, as well as game theory and any sort of conversation. Keep being awesome <3.

[Compliant]

11. If you put yourself DIRECTLY underneath a unit, the AI freaks out and keeps dancing above it instead of moving to the side of your unit in order to become adjacent and fight it; this allows a single powerful unit to beat any number of melee units.

12. Melee units will not allow you to use an ability like GUARD unless you are next to an enemy unit at the end of your unit. If that IS intentional, well, there's a way around it, by quickly choosing what you want before your unit stop moving. Quickly clicking also allows you to do things like fire with a ranged unit after moving EVEN THOUGH you haven't chosen that nice new perk!

13. Please oh please put a hotkey on actions. 1. for the first choice, 2. for the second, whatever. So annoying to move my mouse back between the movement location of a unit and the action I want them to perform. Also makes abusing that #12 bug harder...heh.

[Compliant]

14. This has never happened to me pre-patch, but the vampire bats glitched on me and were only spawning one bat at a time for the last 5 bats.

[Compliant]

15. When my rat bro unit has this awesome new "undead" perk, the rat warriors can be sacrified like an undead unit...but sadly, the giant rats cannot. I wonder if the other undead attributes are not being carried over to the giant rats or other units.