I've been going round in circles lately, because of a problem with Dungeon Deathball's interface.

I kept getting player feedback that the movement buttons were not easy to use, because the game is viewed at an isometric angle but the buttons show cardinal directions.

I received suggestions for various ways to fix this problem (e.g. rotate the arrows, or change the buttons to be isometric, or change the camera angle to be non-isometric) but none of them seemed to sit quite right with me, and I couldn't get the pixel art buttons or icons to look good at 45 degree angles.

So I tried out 2 new camera angles (one from the side, one from behind, neither being isometric) and I polled Twitter and Facebook to see which one people preferred. But there was no clear winner.

All the while, some people had been suggesting a change which I was reluctant to implement because I thought it was going to be a huge task.

Turns out it wasn't.

The change I'm referring to? Making it possible to directly click the squares on the grid, instead of clicking abstracted UI buttons.

OK NOW it's starting to really feel like a tactics game. I regret putting this off for so long, because I managed to implement it in a day and it's totally transformed the feel of the game.

Lesson learned: if lots of people are crying out for something, maybe just TRY IT before dismissing it.

I've only applied this change to the Move, Rest and Attack actions. I'd like to expand it so that Pass and Shoot are possible too, but I'm still figuring out the best way to do that. I'd also like to let you click the second player to switch control to them (remember you CAN already do that by pressing "C") but again, it'll come later.

I'd love to know what you think of the change. It's in the new version (0.4) which is available for free right now on itch.io, along with a whole bunch of other improvements (including enemy health bars!!!)

Leave a comment to let me know what you think or prod me on Twitter, @crowbarska.

Change log:

• You can now click directly on tiles to Move/Attack/Rest (instead of UI buttons).
• You can no longer try to move to a tile occupied by another player, thereby damaging them.
• Enemies have health bars which show when they take damage and when you hover the cursor over them.
• Added a splash image to the title screen.
• Added the "How To Play" screen back in, with some more information.
• Removed the checkboard floor tile pattern to reduce visual noise.
• Fixed bug where the Ball would render behind the player carrying it.