Synchronicles - 2D mobile bite-sized strategy

Hi all, I'll like to start a thread for my ongoing development of a mobile title, made in, of course, Unity.

My main aim is to push a Minimum Viable Product out in under 4 months alone, and test a marketing campaign to maintain retention.

Game will be made free, there will be placed Interstitial Ads ( for a 2nd chance with 1/4 HP, available once per battle defeat. )
No plans to sell IAP for this title.



Synchronicles
A casual collectible strategy title where you explore time warped isles and face off enemies in unique Sync Battles. Recruit units post victory to venture tougher isles and fix the time distortion!

Game
In Sync Battles, units take action after waiting for certain turns on default.
Every turn start, 'Syncs' will spawn in the middle of the lineups. AI and you will take turns using Sync, which will modify unit's countdown. Simply drag the Sync of your choice over on units from EITHER side.

Which sync should you use first? And on who?

When all the Syncs are used up, of if you choose to end prematurely, this turn will end, and any units that are ready will begin taking actions.
All units have a Basic Skill, followed by a Sync Skill which can be passive/active. Sync Skills can turn the tide in battles IF you know how to sync it. Different units have different Sync conditions.

Different units, different Sync strategies.

Once either sides' combined health pool hits zero, the battle will end.
Victories earn you a basic currency called Quartz.
And post battle, you can recruit defeated units post battle with Quartz.

Even with all the Quartz in the world, you need to defeat them first before you can recruit them.

Map uses a system similar to FFTA's "Region Create" and Legend of Mana's "Artifact Placement", where you can choose where to place 'Isles' that you want to explore on a grid around base, modifying them with random rolled grid modifiers like "2x Quartz rewards" or "Half Encounter HP".
Every 15minutes* or so, your map arrangement will be wiped out via a "Time Warp", and you can replace 'Isles' again with new modifiers. That's the retention cycle.

Drag an Isle over the '1/4 HP' grid spot and all battles in that isle will be a pushover ( until the next Time Warp )

*New Feature
Units you recruited with Quartz will be recorded in a Compendium as Collections, which will end up unlocking new Isles to explore when a Collection is completed. This encourages users to try new units for unlocking, and ramp up the collectibles factor.

Progress
Alpha build is up, try it over at http://www.studiopanko.com/
Do give it a shot ( Unity Web Player or Android .apk ), and drop me some feedback from the same link.
After 1 week of review and planning, I'll be starting beta build development next week.

Roadmap

Dec 2014 - Prototype and Alpha
Jan 2015 - Review and Beta ( Colored assets, animated, I promise )
Feb 2015 - Master
March 2015 - Launch ( with initial 7 day retention worth of assets )
Post Launch - Monthly new Isles/Units​

Will update progress over at devblog and here as well.
Thanks for your attention and do drop any concerns here.
I'm grateful of the feedback among peers thus far that had shaped the core game better, and I look forward to more, otherwise I'm pretty much flying blind.


Something in colors for a change

 

Looks really good so far!

I'm a little confused by the concept however, I'm not sure what the different colours mean, is it an indication of what units are synced? And howcome sometimes when I sync a unit it syncs other units, and sometimes It only syncs the selected unit?

 

Sorry if the alpha build is so confusing, just trying out some advanced features which I think is lacking a more in-depth tutorial.

The colors are used now simply to inform users which units are approaching action turn.
So eventually, the Sync conditions will vary to suit different players' play style. Some units gets stronger when they are syncced with opponents, some with their own allies instead. There'll be more sync conditions introduced eventually, like "even number units syncced" "stronger when not syncced at all" "syncs with big units" etc.

For now you can hold your touch on units to learn more about their Sync skill conditions, sorry it got you confused -_-, I'll iron these issues in the beta build.
Thanks for your precious feedback

 

Another update to the build ( still lacking some art assets ),
do give it a shot at www.studiopanko.com ( web player/.apk )

And as usual, do drop your valuable feedback if any, here or on the website. Anything helps!

Some working shots:

 

I am luh..uh..uhVING the units!

 

Very nice angular art style. I'll test out and update with feedback.