Eldritch Lands: The Witch Queen's Eternal War

I love pixel graphics or even what is referred to as 1Bit graphics, but this hurts my eyes.

Very interesting concept, was a fun diversion. I like the slot system - by having both mana and cooldowns, it pushes you into using multiple unit types instead of spamming one like in similar games I recall. I really like the characters. I like playing as a villain protagonist who's rational but someitmes cruel - a lot of the time villain protagonists can just be edgy and not compelling, but she just casually drops "yeah I killed god" and might be the indirect cause of most or all of these problems, but we're still rooting for her. I like how the units have strong personalities. Seeing that the Queen likes her so much (and their dialogues are a deeper connection than most) I used Claymore a lot despite her stats being...I want to sugar coat it but she seems pretty bad. Slow attacks, low range and little hp are a very dangerous combination, meaning she can often be killed off before doing much, but she's not slow enough that it's easy to get someone to tank for her either. The AOE would be good if she did more damage or if she could live long enough to do that damage. A few constructive criticisms: * Essence processing seems unnecessarily convoluted and repetitive. Instead of getting essence, you get items that you have to smelt into essence. Then you have to process essence into other types of essence as needed, even though the only difference is in degree. It's like being paid in physical pennies and having to go to the bank with a bag of pennies every time I want to buy something, which is all the time. The gardening mechanic, while cute, gets stale Possible Solutions: Either just have one type of essence and get it directly by clearing fights, or speciate the essences more so that there's actually a reason to want one over the other rather than them just being more expensive. Perhaps clones of the queen herself cost powerful essence, clones of heroes cost strong essence, blank slates cost weak essence and hideous abominations require eldritch essence. That way, your army composition is guided by what you have access to - you don't want a bunch of blank slates because then your weak essence is spread out, but - oh! I've got eldritch essence, better traumatize this little boy by giving him horrible tentacle arms. * Weird difficulty curve. Others have already pointed out the huge difficulty spike around Med 18...but I also think there's just not enough distinction between the levels, especially early on, where there's a lot of levels in a row that feel like free wins. * The mana tax. Mana is such a vital unit that whenever I dropped it from my composition I'd lose. Horribly. I like the way Mana works (she adds another layer of complexity and can decisively break "ties" by eventually letting you flood the enemy), but with only four slots, it feels painful to have to commit one to economy. The upgrades for her seem to just be hp? But if Mana is tanking, you're doing something horribly wrong, and she's bad at it even with upgrades. It really hurts that your most important unit doesn't meaningfully scale. (Her level 30 bonus is just giving you more mana if she dies...which is a bad payoff for a bad situation). Solutions: Maybe make Mana her own slot, always available. This keeps the layer she adds to gameplay without feeling like a tax. Experimentation is punished. One of the ways the game gets harder over time is that upgrades cost more per upgrade. This mechanic is also in Rogue Legacy, another good game...but I didn't like it in there, either. I don't mind the possibility of investing resources into something that I end up not committing to, but here investing into something bad makes everything permanently more expensive, even if it turns out to be a complete turkey. Compounding the problem, since unupgraded units can't compete with upgraded ones, it's extremely hard to accurately "test" whether a unit is worth investing into (and making everything more expensive) without save scumming. Is it dying horribly because it's inferior, or because it's just level 1? So far only Bomb has an immediate, "yeah, this unit is good" payoff even at level 1. (I suspect that Bomb is just one of the better units). Solutions: Make upgrade scaling independent. In fact, you could even make the price curves sharper, e.g. level 6 costs as much as levels 1-5 combined, meaning that on higher levels you can efficiently try out a bunch of units. Unit diversity: Currently units have only a few different niches - units that tank, units with good AOE, units that Get Rid Of Something Right Now (a niche which the Bomb excels at and nothing else seems to have), units that are Mana specifically because she's the only economy unit and you absolutely need her, and units that are Bad (anything that doesn't fit one of these niches). And, as described above, it can be hard to tell if something is bad because it's underleveled or because it has no good niche. This pushes you into using the same few units, further compounding the problem. Solutions: Perhaps have zombies with different "elements" so different units specialize in getting rid of different types? This would encourage rotation of units - maybe Claymore is good against really big zombies, but for smaller ones you want more all-purpose units. Another, non-mutually-exclusive, possibility is speciating the units costs and cooldowns more - as it is, most of them are clustered around 18 mana. What if Claymore was just exceedingly good, hacking her way through pretty much anything in a given lane, but she cost a whopping 60 mana and could only be used once a minute? (Can you tell I really want Claymore to be Good?) Lastly, I found myself looking forward to a main story. I really like the unit dialogues, but I also wanted to get an overarching plot as a reward for progressing. I don't even need that *much*, but like a little scene every five levels or something would do a lot to break things up. Especially if we get to see more of the daughter! I felt like more could have been done with her. Indeed, if my hunches are correct, she *is* important, but for a reason that's never confirmed. A conclusive *ending* that wraps it all up would also be really nice. (Multiple endings would be even cooler, but I'd be happy with one sufficiently conclusive one).

addicting game loop, fun dialogue. clearly made with a lot of heart.

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Fun, but too easy. I beat the game with no troops maxed and only a few even unlocked. Wish they put as much into game play and difficulty as they put into lore. I would definitely play more if there was more to play.