Oxtongue Heroes

Oxtongue Heroes is a turn based strategy game in its early stage of development. The game has no music nor sound effect (yet). It consists of 5 tutorial maps and 4 regular maps that have various objectives: defeat all enemies, kill the enemy leader or protect some stationary items. The tutorial explains the basic features but some abbreviations, like ZOC or the "X" symbol, appear in weapon descriptions before they themselves are explained. The tutorial maps you have to complete in one turn are frustrating because the fast/medium/slow damage calculation is not explained at all. I thought unlucky damage rolls prevented the "win in one turn". This tutorial needs some rework to address the newcomer's needs and prevent frustration.

Graphics look good and are effective. However, the characters and enemies sprites lack a visual representation of their main weapon. The right part of the battle display shows the properties of the terrain tile and statistics of the unit at the cursor location. This is an excellent way to present the information quickly (no button to press) and avoid the immersion-breaking of stat menus. Pressing <Shift then Up/Down> displays extra contextual information. Only heath bar of damaged units are shown preserver action window clarity.

The user interface offers a lot possibilities: you can save and undo any action from the move history.

The game features a lot of very innovative tactical mechanics such as the Zone Of Control from melee weapons which prevents running between units to attack a unit behind a well organized front line. Some abilities alter the terrain to give bad footing. Spells can also affect the terrain. I had fun burning down enemies that stood on carpet; not only do they suffer extra damage from the burning material they stand on but the carpet also disappear in flames. Line of sight and cover are key elements to consider for range attacks. Moreover, shooters have to choose between half-move + a shot or full move and no shot. Unrealistically, shooting a crossbow is less of a burden than shooting a bow.

All charterers have theirs own set of abilities. This generates a wide diversity of interesting abilities to play with. But all charterers are available from the start of the game so the player doesn't have the opportunity to learn how they work each time a new character joins the team. Also, at the beginning of each map, you deploy as many unit as you want. /* BUG: If you press the selection button on the deploy tile when you've already deployed all available units, the game automatically crashes. */ And the games tells you'll get a higher score (worse) when you deploy more unit. This "higher score = worse" logic should be reverted. Moreover, if you deploy too few units, you make the map impossible. If you deploy too many, you kill its challenge. They should be a recommended number of units to deploy for each map. Fortunately, when things turn bad, you can use the deploy tile at any time to call reinforcements.

Between combat maps, you're presented with a childish global map (place-holder graphic I suppose) and all your characters with their respective fatigue level. This fatigue raises when the character fight in a battle. This is an excellent mechanic that would serve very well in a long campaign.

The game runs in a fixed size 805-by-664 window and lack a full-screen option. The cursor used for range attack target selection moves at an appropriate speed but the cursor used to select your own units moves way too slowly.

When the player has moved all his units, the game doesn't auto-end-turn. The victory conditions, like killing the enemy boss, are not checked when they occur but only when the player selects "end turn". Some times, I could move a unit on the same tile as another of my units.

Conclusion:
Oxtongue Heroes presents a lot of very innovative tactical mechanics, probably unique to this game. It has the potential to shine if it builds a good learning curve by improving its tutorial and introduce character abilities step-by-step.