Very cool demo, but I think it needs a NUX as I have no idea what to do. I randomly clicked stuff but I have no idea if anything accomplished anything.
I've always known it as FTE (First Time Experience). Agreed, the controls aren't entirely intuitive. I didn't know I had to click on the wait icon to 'end' that char's 'turn'.
Didn't know what to do when all the chars were dimmed out.
Also it didn't seem like I could move then attack? It was either move or attack (that or the tiles that showed the actionable area was way too dim to make out to see if it overlapped with an enemy tile).
The artillery didn't show any range tiles at all so I thought I couldn't use it even though it wasn't dimmed.
You are all correct, both about calling it NUX or FTE* and that the game should teach players better. That's been recurring feedback, and the actual game once it fully launches (after Early Access) will feature a gentle introduction – which I'll also add to the landing page then.
*Some companies I worked at called it NUX because FTE would be ambiguous as it usually means "Full-Time Employee".
Personally, I'm somewhat charmed that it threw me into battle without an explicit tutorial… although that's probably because I'm familiar with Advance Wars.
However, even for me, the unlabeled buttons were confusing (both the unit actions and the buttons on the side).
And I would have wanted some way to show an info panel for a given unit describing what the unit can do, its strengths and weaknesses, etc. Indeed, I tried several interactions in the hope of getting one. I tried clicking a unit and then moving the mouse to the box at the bottom (the one that appears while you're mousing over the unit and shows the unit's name etc.; I was hoping that clicking the unit would make the box not go away after the mouse left the unit). I also tried clicking the unit and then clicking the info button on the right, as well as right-clicking the unit. Just mentioning this as weak evidence for what kind of interface users might consider intuitive, if you do add such a feature.
The magic interaction to see this info is long pressing on anything. This is one of a few interactions that works consistently on all input methods since my goal is to provide the same experience across all platforms.
When playing the real game a character explains this before you get started. I chose not to show a character message for now but maybe I should when you first scroll it into view.