battle setting pt.2: reflecting a little on the design of the game + demo 0.5 available

I've finished a playable version for two players, just having to do the artificial intelligence now. this means I have not been able to play very well right now, since there's nobody to play with me here, I use the two player version purely to test the system, but I already started to think some stuff about the design of the game.

the goal with battle setting was taking the basic idea of table setting, tic tac toe pieces that lose life with time until removed, and try to make it more tactical by making the pieces only lose life when they're moved again. this gives space for the player to plan the rhythm the pieces degrade and try to renewel their life points with other pieces abilities.

what I found interesting by now: the pieces get locked when they're neighboured by enemy pieces on opposite sides. since the board is very packed, the pieces get constantly locked and unlocked. I like the density of the effect of each piece. when a piece is moved to a new space, they activate their ability, probably around its new cell, potentially gets closer to form a three piece line and both locks and unlocks new enemy pieces.

however, the fact that pieces are more durable, something that should make the game more tactical, also seems to make it way easier to form a three piece line. in table setting, I constantly found myself having to save pieces with 1 or 2 of life to form a line. here the pieces never seem to reach that point. I'm considering making the attacks stronger, or making the pieces start the game with less life points.

I'm only going to be able to perceive this when I finish the artificial inteligence and manage to play the game for real, but it seems to me I have a pretty fundamental design problem to solve.

I also changed the asset pack I used in table setting. since pieces in that game never moved after being played, the theme of food plates seemed appropriate, but for table setting, where pieces are more active, I decided to change to a pack of little creatures. the rest of the images in the game are still the same, I'm only touching that after finishing programming and design.

the game only has a two player version so far, the instructions are still the old ones from table setting, the graphic part is a mess, and I don't put my hand on the fire for the design just yet, but if someone wants to test the middle of the road version, the zip is in the drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/19IOV6vYRU2YtUDCkdDm0CSh2XFuSVVbE?usp=sharing