OK, I've had a few runs through the three available maps!
Main reaction - kudos, it's a lovely game. It looks
pretty - not just "looks the part", but the whole thing is really quite visually pleasing, the sounds are good, the controls are smooth and make a lot of sense. I sense there's a lot more content to come, but what's there is already an actual fun game and I've enjoyed playing through it. The fact it's quite scenario-driven thus far perhaps limits replay value a bit, but the scenarios are good fun; the "critters" and "the nest" took me 3-4 attempts each before getting the knack of them. Surrounded I wanted to play more of to see more other enemy bugs but I also enjoyed it less, I think simply because I don't like the "fight waves until you die" RTS scenario style so much.
Detailed thoughts/notes:
- When I first booted it up, the graphics settings were weird and so fuzzy I could barely see the camera until I tweaked them (I should've got a screenshot but didn't, sorry)
- It definitely makes my fan boost up quite a bit faster/laptop heat up a bit, don't know if this is normal
- I definitely wanted more of an info base - like mousing over enemies to see what they were or something (both in terms of their species and in terms of getting some sort of tactical sense of how tough they were). The research is clearly good behind the game, and it would be good to see more of that coming through.
- Similarly I needed a bit more clarity on my own side - I guess some of this may be covered by the tutorial, but even so it might be good to flag up "worker ants are workers, black ants are soldiers" more clearly within the UI.
- UI stuff in the top right corner might be a bit small, I wasn't using it much & found I preferred to just look at where the scent markers were
- I felt like I wanted more tactical options at times, though I imagine this is something that will be fixed as more content comes in/different maps - the scenarios as they are work well for the game as it is, but Critters and The Nest at least are fairly pure rush-tactics styley, especially the second half of The Nest (though that bit is good fun!)
- The scent-trail mechanic works very nicely, I really like that and the way it pushes towards a non-micromanaged playstyle
- For Critters and The Nest, I found there was a strong weighting towards learning a map with a couple playthroughs before winning it - because it's not always clear when you're going to hit a chamber with critters in it, learning roughly where those are gives one a huge advantage
I'd very definitely be interested in scenario building if the option was available