Slitherine

First five minutes
Nice ambience "Contact" "Signs" like feel to the music and environmental sound effects
Menu options clear
Superior overall appearance

New game Menu
"Divine Ascension" character has issues, know this is lonely guys sci fi fantasy babe but looks mutated, Heads planted too high on the body, Very unnatural, Breasts look like Botched boob job
Left side cleavage shading off. For once less cleavage and a more natural placement of head on body would be sexier

All the heads look good except character for Noxium Corporation---too cartoonesque for my tastes

Like the factions racial attributes As these are really cool but only 4? Five would be better and more in the spirit of these types of games

Wish there were more than just three world temperature settings on the advance screen


Opening narrative--Too many font Message screens without graphics before the game begins--yawn, don't turn the customers away yet. Should be animated Scenes depicting what the Text screens are describing

Sound cut out first time the graphics of the ships played

Cool colonization opening scene
Sound and music great
Planet surface good

Ouch. UI initially seems clunky or still very beta
Screens all stay open when proceeding with actions and can't move some of them or resize

At first, I had no idea whether my units can move and how many moves they have left---saw message about bar but never saw bar. Had to start looking at unit info screens, this should be easier to identify with glowing unit or obvious icon

Info boxes and mini map are too big, they're constantly obscuring my view

Aliens just appear as little icons. Not impressive until you zoom in. Should introduce them with their own brief sound effect, or at least the first time they appear and randomly include some after that

Why is the mini-map viewer icon a partial hexagon? And why is half my civilization appearing on the bottom half of the screen and half on the top?

Why doesn't the addition of new tech like armor change the appearance of soldiers and formers, the new weapons do

Why when I select aliens, why does the info screen make it seem like I can issue them orders?

30 minutes
Oh no I'm already getting bored
Discoveries of ruins is boring as nothing happens but text box description, which is often too wordy

Did the pick up colonist and replant them routine on the main map but never saw "above info" that would show the benefit of placing population in different locations. Didn't understand where I could put him. Only green area or outside this? Then man wouldn't go away or deploy til I reclicked him on original city
Only later did I realize you do this in a city screen, this should be reworked so its clear and people don't waste their time and get frustrated trying to do this on the main map if its not enabled


Why is shading of viewable area a bit outside the hex lines? This looks sloppy or like a bug the developers didn't bother fixing

Still loving the ambient music background, birds and water--very Avatar like and perfect fit for the theme

When clicking your units they should also have a tiny sound effect--even if only occasionally done--just to remind us their our people, and we should care about their fate. Women, kids screaming when aliens attack cities would also be good


60 minutes
When creating new unit design why can't I rename the new design?
We should be able to do this with all our units
Game is screaming for a better editor

All the possible diplomatic options are cool! Some of the dialog is over the top or just plain silly

Game is getting better now that the production and terra-firming is kicking in

Yikes battles vs aliens are just resolved with a window of text--boring. Should be animation and appropriate combat noise for relevant adversaries, just like soldier battles

Also, no sound for destroying infrastructure?? --- yawn. You've stripped alien combat and city pillaging of all its fun

Again, Why can't I name my cities? We have to be able to personalize some of this. . .

Game is getting much better now but I already have the alien control tech after my first combat w/aliens? I hope this isn't as powerful as it sounds as its much too early for that

Need tip for hunting sea monsters and how to explore sunken ruins

Like events like the aliens are beginning to swarm frontiers even if mine didn't suffer any attacks., beef this up a bit. And add others like this to further stimulate action and suspense

Game has awesome potential bit still needs some cleaning up or the first impressions/gameplay might poison the experience before they play long enough to get hooked. Thanks for the invitation, and best of luck with the final release!

Lots of valid points here. Although I don't agree on all of it, it's still a list worthy of the devs' attention.

As for renaming unit designs and cities, I believe you can do both, though I haven't tried renaming a city yet. There's usually a very tiny icon of a pen next to a text you can edit. This icon can be seen next to a unit's name in the design editor, and the city's name in the city screen. Just click on the name, and start erasing/typing a new name. Admittedly it's not very obvious, and I personally noticed it half by accident. Perhaps colour the editable texts differently, give them a background box, make them slowly blink, or something similar that makes them stand out from static text?

Yes, you can rename both cities and units.

You can even rename captured alien units.

drolfs wrote:Yikes battles vs aliens are just resolved with a window of text--boring. Should be animation and appropriate combat noise for relevant adversaries, just like soldier battles

Battles versus aliens have animations. Destruction of hives doesn't, but neither have conquest of cities, which is the equivalent event.

drolfs wrote:Need tip for hunting sea monsters and how to explore sunken ruins

After you have researched transport logistics your land units automatically enter a transport when they need to traverse water.

dalves wrote:After you have researched transport logistics your land units automatically enter a transport when they need to traverse water.

I think drolfs' point was that other players shouldn't need to tell things like this to him. The game should. And I agree on that part. Many mechanics are not explained well enough, if at all.

Yeah, remember I'm the "old guy" here offering my initial 5-30-60 impressions without having mined the forums or read the rules. But plenty of us still purchase these games and as a teacher I try and promote those I think have some valuable historical feel to them or that just really stimulate the imagination like an Alpha Centauri or XCOM used to.

I think this game does that for the most part, but would like it to be a bit more intuitive, user-friendly, and I do think the battle sounds/animations could use some tweaking and especially the victory conditions which seem kind of nebulous as opposed to being directly connected to the storyline and characters.

HitmanN wrote:

dalves wrote:After you have researched transport logistics your land units automatically enter a transport when they need to traverse water.

I think drolfs' point was that other players shouldn't need to tell things like this to him. The game should. And I agree on that part. Many mechanics are not explained well enough, if at all.

I agree and I think I have complained about it before, I was just saying how it works so he can use it now.

Thanks for watching my back dalves, the game is more satisfying when I name the next heroes and victims. . .