Slitherine

First of all, I'd like to mention that yesterday when I was accepted for this beta I was sadly unable to play. A bug occurred when I'd hit new game,
where Pandora.exe would stop responding. I could not close the game without logging out of my account (the same occurred for attempting to host a multiplayer game).
However, that's been fixed somehow today. The only thing I've done differently was run in administrative mode, but I've also succeeded today in running without admin mode.

At any rate, my impressions:

5 minutes: Good visuals, obviously similar in style to civ/elemental etc. I was rather confused, actually. I moved my colonial soldiers to explore, but couldn't figure out why they couldn't enter
a tile two spaces to the right. I figured it must be mountainous.. hmm. Later I discovered I was at the edge of the map. *Perhaps, because worlds are circumnavigate-able,
you should be able to go to 'the other side of the map' from it's sides and possible poles.* IE. when you travel to the left edge of the map, you don't teleport or anything,
but the unit continues and it reaches the right side of the map. I liked the fluidity of the research mode,but could not find an option to view the entire tree.
*perhaps the option to view the entire technology tree could be added?* I found the tutorial was sufficient, and taught me what I needed to know.

30 minutes: Research is decent, I would find that it is lacking somewhat in visuals and description. *Perhaps something such as icons for upgrades/benefits earned from the tech being
researched could be added on the card that you view when picking your next research could be added.* The workshop is good so far, I figured out how to build the tanks that the research
promised me. Exploration is wonderful! I really enjoy this game's native species, though I wonder if all of them should be hostile. *Perhaps some non-hostile native species could be added.
Perhaps further expanding could be done, say if you kill that herd of cattle-like-aliens it could be harvest-able.* I saw the species present on land, and thought to myself "The only way this could
be cooler is if I find sea-monsters". And as I explored the deep-sea, I did! I believe that this game has a MASSIVE potential for exploration.

60 minutes: I'm comfortable with the game. I find that diplomacy is lacking, but obviously this will be improved later. I find that the basics for diplomacy are all there, the things I wanted to
discuss such as trade, research, and non-aggression/alliance were present. I enjoyed balancing my citizens in the four different specializations, but reflecting on it, I find that while four
professions are sufficient and possibly enough, there is potential to add more fields. Not sure about that, but what's there now is good. Colonization is good, combat is good. *Considering that
this is an alien planet, perhaps more anomalies or differences in terrain/creatures could be found. Maybe you could experiment with primitive-but-developing (in terms of intelligence) creatures.*

All in all, I find that this game is very fun to play, and I cannot wait for further releases. I also enjoy being a part of this game's development!

Thanx a lot for the great feedback! To answer some of your points, we will remove the edges and make the world circular in a future update, the diplomacy will be expanded on as well with more options. The tech tree is left not fully explored because we want to keep the feeling of exploration constant throughout the game, seeing too far ahead we think will remove some of that pioneering experience, as well as the fact that it is more realistic that way, you never know where technology will lead you and it is hard to plan too far ahead in real life as well. We are still working on the tech tree to make it more informative and to enhance the user experience for what you can see. As for exploration we have worked hard to make it as fun as possible and i am adding new alien species all the time as well as some variations of the same species but in different stages of development and hierarchy withing the colony. Keep the great feedback coming as you play on!

The tech tree is left not fully explored because we want to keep the feeling of exploration constant throughout the game, seeing too far ahead we think will remove some of that pioneering experience, as well as the fact that it is more realistic that way, you never know where technology will lead you and it is hard to plan too far ahead in real life as well.

I still strongly disagree with this idea. After you go through once, it just means that you need to keep a window open to gamefaqs to tell you what you're doing. The player should never have to remember something that the game can tell them instead.

It will be randomized.

Soheil wrote:The tech tree is left not fully explored because we want to keep the feeling of exploration constant throughout the game, seeing too far ahead we think will remove some of that pioneering experience, as well as the fact that it is more realistic that way, you never know where technology will lead you and it is hard to plan too far ahead in real life as well.

Makes sense! Thanks for responding. Yeah, this actually does make more sense, I realize.

It will be randomized.

Now that changes things. How random are we talking here? Randomizing the connections between techs? Or randomizing which techs exist at all?

We are randomizing connections and the tier/cost. We weren't convinced of dropping techs so we're going without that for now.