It has several issues:
-It’s too flashy. There are too many animations: flashy buttons, screen shake, a CRT shader, animated upgrade icons, and a moving orb background in the menu. From what I’ve seen, I also can’t disable the screen shake. It’s just too much for such a simple game. It feels like it wants to compensate with graphics what it lacks in gameplay.
-The mouse pointer feels awkward. Sometimes I “hit” rocks but nothing happens because the actual pointer is at the tip of the pickaxe. This leads to weird interactions when you’re slightly to the left or below the tile you want to hit, or the upgrade you want to select. I’d ditch the pickaxe entirely on the upgrade screen, it’s unnecessary, and replace it with a normal mouse cursor.
-During fights, the Impact skill tooltip covers the entire battle. I can’t see what’s happening because there’s this huge popup showing attack, defense, etc. Not that it matters much, since the combat mechanic is so simple that all I have to do is spam the Impact button when the cooldown ends. Still, it would be nice to at least feel like I’m hitting something. Ironically, this is the one place where an animation would make sense, and it’s completely hidden by the tooltip.
-Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t figure out how to equip the sword. It’s not intuitive. I put it in the bag and upgraded the first level of the combat tree, but I’m still fighting with the pickaxe. I don’t see any clear or intuitive way to switch weapons.
-About the gameplay itself: it requires ZERO skill. You just click, then click some more, get rewards, buy upgrades, and click even more. There’s no strategy involved. My dog could probably beat this game just by tapping the screen a few times.
So far, the demo is a no for me, but here’s how it could be improved:
-Instead of focusing so much on flashy visuals and feedback, like the design philosophy behind games such as Candy Crush Saga, focus on the important part: gameplay.
-The gameplay is mind-numbingly easy and repetitive. It desperately needs more strategy, otherwise it’s just “click to win.”
-The UI needs adjustments. The pickaxe cursor in particular is poorly implemented, it would help to look at how other games handle similar pointers.
Not all is lost, it could still be saved, there’s potential, but it really depends on what the full release ends up looking like.