I'll start by saying that over-all, it was a good experience that I enjoyed. The direction the game is heading in is genuinely good, but there are some serious issues of various stripe (hence being an alpha).



Pathing: This would become an issue quite often with smaller rooms. I lost my crystal a couple of times because a hero couldn't walk into the room thanks to a monster blocking the door. I also froze waves by cramming heroes into small rooms. Generally, the pathing AI seems to fall down here rather frequently.



Targeting: Heroes and turrets don't necessarily target creatures attacking the crystal first, and can't be told otherwise. That's a big one, and means a large wave on your front-door usually means loss, instead of a white-knuckle fight. I've also noticed a very large no-target period when monsters are changing rooms; in a small room, a monster is untargetable for about as long as they ARE targetable.



Speed: The Speed statistic, as it's currently implemented, doesn't seem to really function except to cause dysfunction. The fastest hero (blue woman, sword, can't recall her name) can't really use her speed, as opening doors and running to heavily fortified rooms usually means running through another wave. She'll suffer less attacks, but also has significantly lower stats that mean she still takes proportionally about as much damage. And then she contributes less to the fight, later. And, using her to chase down runners doesn't really offer much advantage, as her lower damage means arriving first just lets her break even with harder hitters. And, once again, she loses out on stand-and-fight encounters. Not worth it.



Meanwhile, Butcher (the slowest) can't afford to wear most armors, because his speed becomes a deathtrap if you lower it any further. That would be fine, except...



Some heroes don't scale correctly: Butcher scales poorly. His high damage output is great in early game, but his items means he ends up with a very similar damage output as other characters later. Meanwhile, he usually won't have decent armour, and will STILL be slow. Orange-Sword-Shortguy is statistically about the same as Bird-Sword-Samurai, but can't fix nodes. He levels for cheaper, but this isn't really a perk, because...



Resources rapidly become redundant After the first two floors, I didn't really need food anymore. Most of my heroes were max level, and healing provided such little health it didn't usually matter. Meanwhile, basic planning skills meant that I often didn't need turrets, and by the time I did I had claymoars in chokepoints. I ended the game with over 200 industry. Providing you're careful with the first few floors, you really won't ever hurt for resources. Which meant I didn't get to really enjoy that part of the metagame.



Leveling is less important than items: Given the choice between using Dust to keep my nodes running, to get food, or to buy a weapon, the answer was ALWAYS buy a weapon. Because the choice was between (mostly) hitpoints, or often doubling my damage. Which would kill enemies more than twice as fast. Halving the amount of hitpoints lost. Weapons more than anything decide whether a hero is useful in a fight. Which could be a problem, because...



The game frequently gives you heroes who use the same weapons: I understand there aren't many heroes right now. But when I end up with three sword-using heroes, I'm going to struggle to find the weapons to make them relevant. Because, weapons are what matters.



The load screen is Borked: It appears overstretched, with the three heroes in silhouette half-way cut-off.



That's about it so far. I'm going to keep playing, because it's fun, but I still find myself restarting if I get certain heroes early game.

Pathing: I agree. Haven't run into much problems with it however.



Targeting: Very much agree. Especially for those crystal seeking walkers.



Speed: Agreed, at least for current ver of game, Sara is great at crystal running and operating modules while Gork can simply tank and hit well enough, hopefully it becomes more useful and relevant in later builds.



Hero Scaling: Kind of noticed as well, max level will increase in a later builds I suspect, its a balance that needs to be done right so you don't exactly hate a character because he/she/it does not scale properly or to a degree similar to others in the pool.



Resources: Lack of science resource plays a part here, along with limited uses for both industry and food at this point, which just means you stockpile a ton of it; likely to change when you have more to do with the resources and when science shows up.



Leveling: Leveling seems really important initially but since there is a cap the now and that some items are a big boost to stats... yeah. I agree.



Clones: Likely to mostly vanish or at least become more varied when the hero pool is extended and the item pool: from what i recall the current hero pool is 2 gun - Deena & Max, 3 sword - Sara, Troe & Hikensha, 1 assault rifle - Gork, 1 spear - OpBot.



Borked Loading Screen: My initial loading screen seems stretched too and cut off at the same area.





I'm having fun with the build too. I usually don't restart with starts like OpBot & Sara either, I like the challenge it presents.



Hawk Out.