QoL suggestions

Gameplay
#1

Thank you for creating this interesting game. I played a game with myself for better understanding of the game mechnisim. The first impression is quite good. However I notice a couple of points which might help with the game experience.

  • Provide some sandbox environement for a user to try the game out. I had to create 2 accounts to play against each other, in order to get familar with the game. Can we allow the user to create multiple players?

  • I find it hard to distinguish between different troops and the hp is not quite legible. Would it be possible to improve or simplify the graphics of units?

  • Can we have a control panel on the side that displays all controlled units with its stats? We could also highlight those units who still have free actions. The click on the unit on the panel would function like as if it was clicked on the map.

#2

Hi Colin, thank you for the valuable feedback!

  1. My current plan to help explain the game (beyond the “How to play” in the lobby) was to create a video, however, you made me realise a walkthrough sandbox might be easier than I thought so I’ll increase its priority on my TODO list (this would be really catchy on the hexfray.com landing page before you login!)
  2. This is a good point players have already brought up. I’d like the game to be accessible to everyone regardless of screen and eyes, ideally including players with vision impairment. That said, I lack resources in this area and it might take me a while to get a good solution to this. A first easy improvement would be to say “your selected unit is X with Y hp” somewhere in the UI, and maybe for Soldiers include “you have Z bases in range” as that’s truly hard to see sometimes – I think I can add that soon.
  3. The units without free actions are (mostly*) greyed-out and unclickable on the map. How would the panel help you? I personally feel that it’s best to see the position of the unit on the map but I might be lacking some viewpoint here.

* There are some exceptions which I haven’t covered yet, e.g. two units next to each other who can only move to each other’s place and nowhere else.

#3

The development is very promising, I really like a lot of the features. It’s fast, playable even on a smartphone, responsive, very few of obvious bugs.

As for the small size of units - until a proper zooming technique is in place, a regular page zoom provided by your internet browser works great, especially for smaller maps.

My suggestions for near future would be:

  • Allow to change the amount of starting coins in each map
  • Numerically show the amount of coins I get every turn
  • For each game, allow different time limits (set when creating a game)
  • There could be a “Next game” button when I finish a turn, which would link me to another game where it’s my turn
  • This is definitely in the works - units reacting to different terrain (damage modificators) + units defending themselves (returning some damage)
  • Basic ingame chat
#4

Thanks! Those are great suggestions again, my picks for what I’ll aim to implement soon are:

  • units returning attacks,
  • setting the initial amount of coins (getting various kinds of maps should increase attractivness of the game),
  • highlight reachable bases to capture (for the legibility point, I think this is the worst problem in that regard),
  • providing sandbox/tutorial environment (a non-trivial amount of work but has a great potential to attract people from the landing page).

I’d like to do more for legibility but suggesting users to use browser zoom might be good enough for now.

The rest goes into backlog/wishlist as time is limited, sadly. But progressing towards more interesting gameplay (e.g. by enabling more complicated strategies) while making the UI easier to use (as with the suggested “next game” button) is generally a theme I want to stick to in the near future.

#5

A resign button would be nice :slight_smile:

#6

Hi Andy, good point and you’re in luck, I just deployed that earlier today so it should be ready for you next to “End Turn” button when it’s your turn.

1 Like
#7

I request an undo button

#8

I think the problem with an undo button is you can test moves out before hand… Maybe an undo last movement would be fine, but not undo an attack etc

#9

Hi mahks, that’s a fair request. It’s on my list of things to consider when more people are playing the game and it’s clearer what’s the general playing “style” but I will bump its priority a bit. Like Andy suggested it would be rather simple like undoing the last move.

#10

Undo should only be possible for movement, and only one move to the past. As attacking includes a bit of randomness, it could be abused for getting the +1 bonus. Alternatively, the +1 bonus could be move-specific (redoing the same attack would always resulted in the same numbes) or pre-determied at the start of a turn.

#11

Any plans for fog of war? Maybe as an option when starting a game?

#12

That might be interesting! It’d be a big undertaking at the moment so I am unlikely to add it soon but I’ll note it down.

#13

My undo use was for “range finding” ie; you move, then see what is in range, if your target is not, then undo. Currently one has to count hexes to see if the move and shoot will be successful.

I agree that like in most games if a move changes something then it cannot be undone, like attack or a reveal of fog etc.

#14

Another undo situation; mistakenly move unit off base before base is captured. 3 turn loss of capture time in my case. :frowning:

#15

I put the undo button plan near the top of my todo list.

EDIT: This was done a few weeks ago already.

1 Like
#16

Implemented the first version of an interactive tutorial, it’s available in the lobby (i.e. the title page after logging in). One day, there will likely be a sequel covering money & unit building.