Found this through the Racial Justice bundle. I have a few thoughts and since you don't have a suggestions thread, I'll just post them here.
First... Set up a suggestions thread and a bug report thread. You need a dedicated place for your community to participate and for yourself to find all the feedback.
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I'm a huge fan of tower defence and would love to see another good one on the market especially since there aren't really that many decent ones. These are some technical things I noticed right off the bat that can be improved.
Fast Forwarding:
Being able to speed up time is a nice feature but the problem is it speeds up the break in between waves as well. It needs to disengage after each wave so the break isn't affected and players get a proper break without having to manually slow it back down.
Applying cards to towers:
Having a basic tower by default that's augmented into a new tower is a neat idea. The towers really need to be highlighted when you mouse over them though so you know exactly what tower you're applying the card to. When the towers start getting stacked up behind each other it's really easy to apply the card to the wrong tower which is a huge pain in the ass if you end up accidentally replacing a tower that you've already upgraded.
The cards:
The cards really need to depict their effect better. For instance, why does the watter card have a picture of a hand holding a sword on it?
On a similar note, the look of the towers doesn’t always match the effect you apply to it. For instance, why is the wind tower a crossbow?
The menu (or lack of one):
I could be wrong but there doesn't seem to be a way to bring up a menu or even quit while you're in a game. If there is, it certainly isn't on the escape key where I and pretty much everyone else would expect to find it.
The UI:
I know the game is still in early stages and I assume you have plans to spice up the overall look of the UI but right now the wave counter really needs to be fixed (and labled). It doesn’t change every wave which means most of the time, it’s reading wrong and doesn’t properly indicate what wave you’re on or how many waves are left.
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The game play seems to function pretty well but as it is, it’s pretty bog standard and not much of a challenge.These are some game play suggestions.
Balance:
-Nothing really seems to be balanced. I was getting more money than I knew what to do with so I never really had to strategize.
-Do the different creatures have different effects? Because I wasn't really noticing anything significantly different between them.
Waves:
The waves don’t really smoothly increase in difficulty. The first 5 waves or more were incredibly easy so I wasn't even bothering to add towers and was basically just sitting back and watching. Then all of a sudden a wave just walked through everything. This brings up two points.
One, A sharp increase in difficulty is always frustrating. The game needs to slowly climb and prepare the player for what’s coming, not just drop something new on you out of nowhere.
Two, The game wasn’t engaging me and keeping me building and upgrading. If i’m at a point where I feel like I can just sit back and watch wave after wave fall right at the beginning of the maze, something is off.
On another note with the waves, if there’s going to be a break between waves, that needs to be the build faze. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to be able to build during the wave AND during a break. If you can build during the wave then you should get rid of the break and have the game play kind of like an RTS where you have to be on your guard at all times and planning as you go. If you’re going to have breaks between waves they should be the build faze and the player shouldn’t be able to build during the wave.
Progression:
There really needs to be some kind of progression system. Maybe instead of starting with all the cards the player can collect them over time and be able to build a custom deck. Or maybe the player could upgrade the cards. The game really needs some kind of progression.
Towers:
There needs to be more to do with the towers. Maybe you could put multiple cards on a tower? For instance, maybe each tower could be upgraded multiple times. Like, if the player applies an electric card to a tower, maybe the player could have the ability to play another eclectic card on it to upgrade it. Or maybe the player could mix and match cards to combine effects?
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No matter how you slice it, a tower defence game is a puzzle game. I, as the player should have to figure out each map like a puzzle, not just sit and watch wave after wave walk from one end of the map to the other. There needs to be a strategy. I should be figuring out which towers work best on what kind of enemy and determining my build order. Personally, my favorite TDF games are the ones that let the player build the maze rather than having a pre designed one but even in games where the maze is pre planned, there still needs to be a puzzle for the player to figure out.
I think there’s a foundation here and the overall look of the game is cute but it needs a lot of work. As it stands, it’s very bare bones and very average.
I hope this didn’t come off too harsh, that wasn’t my intent. I just wanted to put in my two cents. I would love to see this game blossom into something unique and I wish you all the luck with it. If you’d like more in depth suggestions I’d be happy to be of help. Good Luck!