Recent reviews by swifton

I would not be comfortable recommending this game for people who want to learn programming, for the following reasons.

1. One of the most basic things you can do in the game is editing variables that are stored in objects. However, you can't see current values of these variables. This means that you can't do any debugging, which is the most common activity in programming. You have to guess what the values of the variables are, which makes it much less accessible for beginners.

2. The first several puzzles were designed without beginners in mind. Instead of introducing concepts gradually, the puzzles dump a lot of new information on a player, which will easily overwhelm any beginner. The first thing that a player will see, is 10 lines of code (which is a lot for a beginner), half of which are completely unnecessary for the first puzzle.

3. The help section is incomplete. It only provides a brief description of each function, but there is no description of basic programming concepts and no explanation of how the code executes. It is impossible to play this game without previous programming knowledge.

4. It is unclear when the code executes, and there is no explanation of that.

Very very very buggy.

The game feels unfinished.

1. It takes 15 seconds to load a battle. What is going on during that time? This is a simple game, and I have a powerful machine. I want to run many battles fast, I don't want to wait 15 seconds between them.

2. The programming part has very little documentation: only a couple of tutorials on the workshop. You have to guess what things like "the default trigger 'TRIGGER'" and "TestTargetAmountInRange" mean. (And how it's different from "Has Target Amount In Range")

3. The AI architecture is a little illogical: why do animations cause actions? Why not make events and actions the center of your program and attach animations later? Why do you need separate code blocks instead of making every action a code block by default?

4. The AI section is not very well organized. I want to look at a screen and understand how my AI works instantly. Instead I have to browse multiple lists and switch between them trying to put everything together in my mind. Animation X is started by condition Y, so I have to go to the list of conditions. Condition Y checks variable Z, so I have to open the list of variables. Then it executes this code block, and I have to switch back and forth all the time.

5. The AI capabilities are limited: the designer tried to predict every single feature that the player will need and make a separate option to provide that feature. Instead of providing elementary building block that can be combined into whatever the player wants. The only nontrivial condition that you can use is if you encounter a bunch of enemies. Is that all that can happen in an RTS? What about "half the pack is dead, so let's retreat"? Or "we have a reinforcement, so let's attack again"? Or a million other things that will likely come up if you play long enough? The designer added a note that you can email him and request a feature, but the system should have enough generality that you could implement everything yourself.

This is a very obnoxious game that clutters space in my library and my fast access list.