Initial impressions from a noob

[eddysterckx]

Good morning,

Executive summary : conceptually this game rocks, unfortunately there are serious (but fixable) errors in the execution. I realize this is a beta so …

Tutorial : useless in the current state of implementation : everyone who has ever played *any* computer game can figure out in 10 seconds that selecting a unit is left-click and performing an action is right-click, so the current tutorials are a waste of time. However, there are some portions of the gameplay which could benefit from a well-constructed tutorial and keep a gamer from having to read the manual (the horror …) so I guess this is a work in progress.

Scenarios : Imaginatively presented – they’re like bullet points on a presentation – and that’s perfect as you don’t want to read 10 long sentences just to get the basic information that this is a counter-attack scenario or a hold-and-defend or a cavalry-riding-to-the-rescue one – very well done. And a nice selection too.

Force selection : I like the way how you get a core force and depending on how you want to tackle the scenario objectives you can buy additional troops. However, the points system as displayed is counter-intuitive : when it says “300/300” it means “300 available out of 300”, whereas one would expect a “points spend / total points available” system – I know this is done so the gamer doesn’t have to do the math when he has already spend 227 points and wants to know if he’s got 75 points left to buy that particular unit, but it somehow feels wrong. This part of the game could benefit from some floating info if you hover your mouse cursor over a UI component.

Ok, let’s cut to the chase here, there are some minor niggles with this game, but there’s one big, major problem : the visual representation of infantry units. Rangers, regular infantry, scouts and engineers all look the same – but they’re entirely different units where gameplay is concerned and there’s no visual clue on the screen what’s what unless you hover your mouse over it. This is no good – you need to be able to immediately see where all your engineer, etc. units are. There are a couple of ways this could be accomplished – for example : have a row of buttons in the UI, when you click the “engineer” button, all your engineer units get highlighted. An even better way would be to replace the current uniform marker floating above a unit with a marker that identifies the type of the unit. This would make managing infantry-based units in the game *a lot* easier, and that’s really the only place where this game has let me down : infantry unit management is way more difficult than it should be and you need to visually remember where you put each and every unit. It’s telling that I didn’t have a problem with the vehicles or support units like AT guns that way, just because they’re so easy to identify. Same goes for positively identified enemy units. If you spend half your time during a turn hunting around to see what all units are, there’s something seriously wrong.

The mini-map is nifty – I like it how no screen real estate is lost in its implementation – however, why not also use a couple more colors to indicate and distinguish between AFV’s, infantry and support units like AT guns/mortars/mg’s ?

Can’t really say much about the AI – it seems aggressive enough – maybe a bit too much and it certainly is a challenge for a newbee to the game, but I guess the focus will again be on multi-player through the Slitherine matchmaking server. What I would really like here is the possibility to directly hook-up with an opponent *without* going through a server which may or may not be there in 5 years time.

Overall, this game has a skirmish tabletop game feel – can’t really put my finger on it what makes it so, it’s just the combination of the limited space, how objectives are spaced-out and having a limited number of turns and units to accomplish them and the short time it takes to play a scenario. All good points. But that infantry UI problem really needs to be fixed as it’s a major source of frustration.

Greetz,

Eddy Sterckx

[pipfromslitherine]

Thanks for the feedback. In our experience one can never set the bar too low with tutorials, it's one of the reasons they are so quick to complete .

We'll take a look at the infantry unit id issue you mention - it feels like it would make things easier.

Thanks for all your feedback.

Cheers

Pip