To preface my comments, I am not an avid war game player, because I am not yet that framiliar with this genre of games, and the companies that make them. In researching the genre I came upon Slitherine and this sign up and am hoping to become more involved with these games. As a semi new comer to this area of gaming, some of my comments might seem naive and show my noobness. If so I apologize and in my defense I just want to help if I can. That said...
My first thought after finally getting the beta and starting it was, "hey this is just like that game I used to play on the PS years ago, [Panzer General]". Well duh.
I like the look of the game. You get to see a pretty good sized area, and the graphice are detailed enough that, after you get framiliar with the units you can easily tell what they are by sight. I tried out a few of the tutorial levels and was confused as to why there wasn't an actual tutorial. Maybe you are expecting a more sophisticated clientelle that would already know how the game works and not need any hand holding. If so I guess that reveals that I am a slightly bigger noob than you might have previously suspected
. (or perhaps you plan on doing that and just haven't added it yet). Personally a quick walk through, either by voice or graphics, showing and explaing the basics of how to play, i.e. the objectives, how to move, reinforce, attack, upgrade, etc would have been nice. Also, an in game explanation of all of the stats would be helpful as well. Now I realize that the manual will obviously contain all of that information, but I think having a basic explanation in the game so you can see the stats and controls and movement would be nice for a quick refresher, or if you don't want to read or don't have the manual, or like me, have a hard time reading small print 
I like how all of the controls are on the main screen and that you don't have to switch pages to get information, or give commands. I really like the mouse interface, however it might also be nice to have some keyboard shortcuts for things like cycling through units, upgrades, reinforcing, sleeping etc.
Performance didn't seem to be much of an issue, however it might be nice to be able to speed up the battle events and during the AI's turn.
At the beginning of a scenario it would be nice to have write up or a voice over, (or both
), explaining what the campign is and what the objectives are. It would also be nice to have a description of the different units, with their strengths and weaknesses in the upgrade and purchase unit screens.Well I'll get back to playing and see if anything else jumps out at me. Please let me know if this is NOT the kind of information you are looking for.
Be well,
. It keeps jumping up to the top of the box and you can't see what you are typing below the original window size. Perhaps if I were a better typer it wouldn't matter so much, but as it is kind of bites.
