Comments - aiyel

don't be discouraged by my criticism, I did have a lot of fun with it. I would definitely buy a sequel if it improved on what you already have.

is really awesome that you came up with this game independent of metal marines' influence. there are some remarkable similarities, but a lot of things that are very innovative as well.

u hope your sales here on desura are good enough to warrant a sequel, I'd love to see what you can do with the concept now that you have experience and feedback.

Here's some of the changes I'd make aside from interface:

Streamline the resource collection. Seed the resources a bit more liberally, guarantee everything nexessary to perform basic offensive ops within, say, a fifteen-tile radius of the command ceter. Cut down on the number of minerals that need to be searched for. The most obvious solution is to make all refineries passively collect one or two of them from any other resource.

Rather than forcing the player to micromanage all the factories in the game to produce the half-dozen components required for each of their various offensive missiles, allow an option for factories to be set to auto-fulfill orders. There are still benefits to stockpiling missile hardware in overall efficiency during a lull when you can stop and think about how many of component x you need, but you could also macro-order say ten missiles of one type and twenty of another and the factories set to auto-fulfill would start cranking out the necessary components and assembling the missiles automatically. Less efficient than stockpiles, but also much less mental overhead on the player's part.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the concept behind the game, the old-school Metal Marines was a long-time favorite of mine... your game is fun, it's just a little clunky in practice.

Useablility. Sorry for the delay, final exams. Had to find a chance to play and refresh my memory. Anyway, here's some things that probably need changing in a future version:

A lot of functions could use context-sensitive options, or pop-up interface elements. Building and geological survey, for example, could be available through a right-click menu. Missile defense could have an as-needed display on the right or left margin, complete with the (optional) video clips of missiles in flight or dying to my defenses.

The resource management is, I feel, needlessly complex. There are several kinds of mineral that are needed for different projects, and any given missile could need any number of them, pre-assembled into parts and then assembled into useable missiles. You're not guaranteed, with the randomized resources, to get what you need in useful quanitites.

having had this game for a couple of years now (got it from gamersgate) I can offer the following advice: If you liked the original Metal Marines, chances are, you'll love DH:MW. That said, the interface, though beautiful, is terrible in practice. There are also too many resources to keep track of (and hope you can find in sufficient quantities on a level where the resource distribution is the only randomized element)

It was fun, but the bad interface made it borderline unplayable on later levels.

If the Desura version has seen these flaws done away with, I'll gladly pay for it again as it has the seed of a fantastic successor to an old favorite.