Game review: Tiny Squad

Tiny Squad is a tactical/strategy game by Ilia Karpenko. The game features a level approach similar to many online puzzle games but relies on tactical/strategy mechanics for gameplay. For each level, the player is assigned a number of points to build their "tiny squad" in order to defeat the opponents.

Summary of analysis
Significantly lacking new player experience, passable gameplay, adequate interface on controls, cutesy graphics, mediocre music and sound.

Tutorial/New player experience
Tiny Squad's new player experience is woefully lacking. A player is effectively left to figure the game out through trial and error with minimal tutorial or help elements to aid them. There are a lot of possible strategies that could be employed, but none are offered to the player to help them learn and even basic tactics such as positioning are left up to the player's discovery.

Gameplay experience
Overall, the gameplay experience is passable, but definitely nothing to acclaim. Compared to other titles in similar genre, Tiny Squad is barely a notable mention. On its own merit, it's okay but is bound to serve a much better purpose in being a learning practice rather than adding to a designer's resume.

Interface & Controls
The game's interface is largely unimportant to gameplay and could be implemented from the main menu, there's also a set of buttons to determine actions speed that seems more for personal amusement than necessary utility. Character specific elements of the game's interface, by contrast, are absolutely vital and would probably benefit from being less cluttered on the field of gameplay. The entirely mouse-driven controls scheme functions decently, especially with ranged effects, but tends to be unfortunately accident-prone when it comes to tactical movement applications.

Graphics
Probably the best element of the game is the its cute miniature characters. The character and effect graphics help keep many of the other issues from bogging down gameplay. Unfortunately, the menu/title screens shows much more emotive characters than will be seen during the course of play.

Music & Sound
There's only a few background musics, which are okay to listen to for a few levels, but which kind of lose appeal quickly. Sound effects used in the game do a decent job, though they could stand more variety when it comes to different themes of opposition.

Commentary
Games live and die by the new player experience and skipping such completely is going to cripple a game's chances. Even short games need to introduce a player to the concepts of play and a poor-quality help section is still better than dumping a player into the action without a clue of what they're doing. This, more than anything else hurt Tiny Squad.
From the information I could track down, this appears to be the developer's first attempt at a published game and the quality of Tiny Squad effectively backs this perception. Were I to recommend anything to them, it would be to study more of their competition as well as volunteered, constructive criticism. There's no shame in copying mechanics from successful titles and a game designer really should be very well experienced in both the genre of the title they're working on in addition to a wide breadth of titles (both good and bad) in general.
For independent game designers/developers/etc, some of the best titles are those that innovate, often blending together elements across genres while adhering to player expectations (as developed by popular titles) is what gets them mention in the industry.