I'll start with the pros:
1. It's a great concept - The idea that you get to collect minions that you beat, and then use them for future levels is good.
2. Layers of strategy, but not too much - Since the levels are semi-sequential, you get to plan which levels you want to beat first, based on the minions available. For example, if you know air units beat water, you might spend some time trying to get air units first, and then use them to beat the water levels. That being said, Not all levels are accessible at one go, which can be overwhelming for a new player coming into the game, and the level unlocking system has been very nicely done.
In a level itself, you get to choose a team, for which the minutest of changes might affect the result drastically. The cap on the number of units per level, and units per category (ranged, melee, support) means that you can chop and change as you wish, but because we don't have much wiggle room (2 ranged and melee, 3 supports), it means that there are fewer combinations available, allowing you to reach an optimal strategy more quickly. This means more satisfaction and less frustration - Always a plus, given that this is supposed to be a "mini"-game of sorts.
3. Great music - Sure, the creator used some third party library for it, but it's suitably chosen, and sometimes I find the soundtrack getting stuck in my head long after I've played the game.
4. Inexpensive - For the price, the amount of gameplay is fairly reasonable.
The cons:
1. Buggy - Some of the levels require you to think about target prioritisation. For instance, if you know that a huge wave is incoming, you might want to spread your range aoe damage, to maximise your stun area. So you switch your target prioritisations to "closest enemy" and "furthest enemy", say. The problem is, I noticed that once there were closer enemies than the ones your minion was targetting, it doesn't switch over until it kills the one it's focusing on. I feel like this is a game-changing (but not game-breaking) bug, and makes some levels harder than they were probably meant to be.
2. Level Balancing - Playing this game, you can tell that it was very carefully designed and balanced. However, it still fails in some aspects. The levels start off easy, which is good, and is meant to get progressively harder. Eventually, you reach a level where you actually have to try and beat by optimising your team selection. The problem is that once you beat that level, the subsequent levels seem too easy to progress through. I believe this is because the minions you have to fight are fairly similar, just with a higher dps, and employing a similar strategy will get you through it easily.
3. Unit balancing - There is one unit in particular in this game that I feel is waaay too OP. Once I got that unit, it was always on my team, just because it makes any level easier to beat, even on a level which contains its weakness. On the flip side, there were minions in the game that I didn't even bother thinking about, simply because they seemed way too weak, and there was never any reason to use them. It would be nice if the unit balancing was such that it would at least make us consider using the weaker units, maybe for the elemental advantage, or something like that.
4. End of game - I get that this is meant to be a small-scale game, made by a solo developer after three months of hard work, which I have to say is quite the feat. However, when I completed all the levels, it seemed a bit too abrupt. In a game like this, you're usually expecting a final level, with some big, ginormous boss with smaller minions, maybe more waves than usual, and then you might need to make a few teams and swap them out from time to time to deal with different waves, etc. Tldr: I was hoping for a boss level at the end, and after beating it, some cool splash screen to say "Congratulations, you've finished the game. Try replaying it on a harder level, etc etc etc", which would have given me a greater sense of accomplishment.
Overall, this is actually quite a fun game to play, and feels rewarding when you beat it. The bugs and balancing issues I highlighted will always be in every game, and in this case, none of them were particularly game-breaking. You could always work around it somehow. Definitely recommended.
