Hello all, time for another update. 

It seems these updates come organically in 2 week increments, so I will probably spread out the work to keep the same pace.

Anyways, in this new build I have added 6 more Heroes reaching a total of 12 now.
With them came a couple of new mechanics like AOE, Pull, Switch place, Banish etc.
At this moment, I feel this is enough Hero content to fully explore the design space - I will be adding new features for them as development continues.

There were some removals from the initial design, namely the Cannon.

I envisioned it as a means to capitalize on accumulated gold (thru destroying enemy Units and keeping center control). But it turned out that the combat is so involving and demands concentration from the players, so they would keep forgetting about the upgrading the cannon.

On the flip side, players expressed the need to get quickly back into combat, so it was a natural decision to introduce BUYBACK mechanic.

So, Cannon is no more, but you can spend excess gold to Buyback Heroes - it works much better, allowing you to concentrate on the battle and allows for interesting tactical decisions should you buy a new ability/upgrade or do a Buyback.

Furthermore, I did some experiments with Hero Mana - namely tokenization to allow Heroes to cast abilities in succession. While the gameplay benefited from the ability to do single Hero combos, the system introduced a chaos to readability.

For instance, as the Heroes would refill their Mana, icons would lit up signaling a player that some ability is available.
This created confusion on multiple fronts:

• Players would take time to scan the Hero Panel, mentally noting what is available and what is not - for all 3 Heroes
• Players would think that a particular ability is available, only to find out that it is not - breaking the established mental model
• Players couldn't reliably predict when the enemy is able to cast - this is ok when you are controlling one character, but messy with 3.
• The number of projectiles and their frequency doubled, making the whole combat very hard to read.

As you can see, this a perfect example of "less is more" - the game has lost some potential depth, but kept readability clear - which is much more important in my opinion.

While I am at the subject of readability, there is one huge aspect that needs to be tackled to prove this concept is worth taking to the next level - the grouping of Heroes.

As it stands now, the Heroes sometimes tightly group into one area making it very difficult to read what is going on and also very hard to select targets. For the next update, I hope to have this thing clarified.

If it won't be possible I will have to make another mechanic (grid based maybe) and change the design accordingly - who knows that will it turn out to be.

Hope you come and read the next update!

Until then, cheers!