itch.io

I managed to complete it somewhat unconventionally, with only edged damage (bursting down one character even if the 2v1 after is drawn out), Lia's repositioning ability actually ends up splitting the damage almost perfectly evenly with no need for a shield (11/11 stats), altho only won the fight by a sliver with both characters alive still

Rn the meta from what I've found just seems to be blockading the board and building up tons of points, then blitzing through the opponent's army. Kinda like a puzzle game early on, maybe it'd be interesting to have some challenge modes where you have a turn limit or only half point income

Maybe it could be something related to the animations? stuff like that can be very elusive. When the game locks up, you are able to like open menus and move pieces and stuff, but when you let go of them they just hang and don't snap to a square, and when it froze after using swap I ended up getting multiple pieces rendered on the same square.

Finds: Upon opening a board with boosters or portals, they won't animate sometimes, and the game stops working, so it's occurring the moment the board is loaded or maybe even before! Background still animates tho, even when the game is locked up.

The issue can occur on any board but seems less common on the first few boards with no elements

The issue can occur even if only playing the same board multiple times

The issue can occur whether the previous board resulted in a win or a loss

Returning to menu between boards seems to prevent the issue. (As a super janky fix you could prob just call the code that takes it to the main menu and then call some more code to go back to the level select screen after every board, and then maybe removing some of the code until it breaks could also help isolate the issue)

Hope some of this helps!

I got stuck on the last level for a while, because I completely forgot that you can directly attack and was so focused on crushing the opponent cell lol, very enjoyable game tho!

A cute short little game, pretty forgiving as well, enjoyed it a lot

Level 1: Cool, I can move!
Level 3: Friendship with move has ended, now divide is best friend

Great game tho, had a lot of fun playing it!

As others have mentioned, I've also had issues with the game locking up.

Thankfully this only seems to occur occasionally within the first 0-2 moves of a game, and not later into a drawn out game, so it's not that bad to deal with, just close and reopen the game. I'm really unsure as to the cause, but seems to happen every 2-4 games yea

Edit: happened in the middle of a game after using swap it seems

Unfortunately yea this game suffers from the AI throwing away material constantly. Especially on boards with chokepoints, you  can simply "win" on turn 5 almost, just hit end turn 50 times and bumrush pawns to the end in one move ( https://imgur.com/a/n0lHH7G ). It's also very easy to bait the enemy to throw away the pieces, if it doesn't on its own. I think that the ability to move pieces should become progressively more pricey the more moves are made on a turn, and be more expensive for more valuable pieces (sweeping the board with a queen in one turn definitely shouldn't be possible). Overall the game suffers from a lack of difficulty I think, tho it's still very enjoyable I find!
I think the issue with making the AI more cautious is it would quickly become a war of attrition, yet I think that may be more an issue with the game principles themselves (esp on more blocked boards) than the AI, given that it's predominantly spawning pawns. Maybe have the AI make more intelligent decisions on what pieces to spawn, based on mobility evaluations