Bronze, Silver, Gold achievement for each level based on how close to optimum your solution was would make it more engaging in the beginning. I take from the comments it gets plenty challenging just to finish it toward the end. Nice concept.
Nice graphics, I'd like to see stats on monsters hovering over them. I see you've fixed a few of the earlier complaints, thanks for that. I'm sure that saved me some frustration. I didn't have problems with being looted a lot, I did build towers. The game did get easier after the golems. Especially with the 3x attack skill. I didn't even bother with the 5x version.
It's a pretty implementation of an old puzzle that started with pencil and paper. The timed aspect is the only real challenge once you understand the strategy. Any map can be completed by starting at a vertex and avoiding any dead end path after that as you traverse the map. There will always be a way back to the starting point.
I liked the game, I did best with the octopus and picking anything that would help them survive. Reached level 9-10. My biggest complaint is that it gets very hard to tell what is happening toward the end of the game. Suddenly all my ships are dead, and the screen gets darker. Make the health of the base clearer, the refresh time on making a new ship is very prominent, but I make no decisions based on that. A lot of others have made great suggestions too. It would have been nice to be able to own those blue guys before the level cap kicked in. They were always the terminal ship throughout the game. Maybe slow down the waves ramp up a bit and add one more tough enemy.
Even the monkey mini-game had a very random feel to it. I have to agree with everyone else, this was a painful 15 points, and not very fun. If I wasn't almost there by the time I felt like quitting I would have stopped.
A lot of creativity in the characters, it would be nice to have an in game diagram of the relationship of the elements and their symbols, I found I couldn't always remember which skills would help most, but even balancing the stats the game was more tedious in long battles than hard. I didn't like having to leave a lot of loot on the ground due to lack of space.
I think it would help me, and maybe I've just played too many times today, if the anchors weren't a darker shade of red than the bullets, maybe white anchors would help. I find myself moving toward the bullets sometimes when there's an anchor on the screen.
Warning: Skills won't train above level II if you don't follow the recommended specialty guideline. And if you want to change to another skill it costs 10g. I didn't find this out until I was level 50 and had used several non-recommended skills on my 6 heroes.
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