A streamlined warhammer
Cool game. Reminds me of Warhammer, but more simplified and kinda streamlined.
I liked the way that there's a fair amount of variety in the units and everything within the individual games seems fairly well thought out (perhaps barring the cumulative effect of high ground on chained magic, and the way the bonuses (affecting the first damage) indirectly affect the subsequent hits - maybe each hit should be calculated seperately?).
I have 3 complaints/suggestions for improvement.
1 - numbers aren't really explained properly. I found that the only way to know how much health each bonus would add, how much the max. range was, how the %s worked... was basically to test out stuff in a 1-player game and reiterate. Took a few plays of multiplayer to even realise how the chain works. That kind of thing seems like it should be in the in-game documentation.
And when creating units, I really think we should have a run-down of their current health/damage/range/speed whilst hovering over them.
2 - multiplayer scoring methods make no effort to discourage quitting.
I'd personally advocate a system whereby points gained/lost depend largely upon the relative scores before the game - like the score you gain for a win could be multiplied by ((opponentsPreviousScore+100)/
(yourPreviousScore+100)) up to a maximum of say, 10 and a minimum of, say, 1/4.
But I can understand that you might want to avoid such complications.
At the same time, I see no reason to not have folk lose 10 points if they quit and more than 2 turns have been played.
3 - the single-player game is lacking. Whilst it's a decent setup for quickly testing out an army or getting to grips with the game, it offers no interest beyond that. It's easy to attain the maximum score and the game offers little variation if we are to play again. Maybe having a larger pool of challenges with 10 randomly selected, with random terrain (though perhaps rotationally symmetrical) would help make it fun to play a 2nd time.
Having pretty much 'overcome' the first problem by working out all the stuff through iteration, I'd enjoy playing far more than I have. My main gripe now (the main thing turning me off) is the number of games that are disconnected. Sometimes due to people, sometimes because of the servers... I can't know which happens.
The game is classy, great graphics, cool sound and bgm.
A few faults, but still well worthy of a spot in the top50.
