Early Access Feedback

First off, I want to say that wow this is a beautiful game. Also, a game that tells a really weird sci fi story that has something to say about imperialism, and has a lot of meat on its strategy bones? It’s great!

I did have some notes while playing I’d like to share on general usability and gameplay after my initial time with the game. I believe I’m maybe 2/3 through Chapter 1.

  • Sometimes I seem to be unable to set certain supply lines. Can’t tell if this is a bug or I’m doing something wrong. I have a save with the problem reproduced if it’s not something you’re already repro-ing on your end, though not sure where to send it if you want it.
  • Somethings feels a little finnicky about unit selection but I can’t put my finger on what. I’m finding myself accidentally clicking on units I don’t mean to be. I wish I had something more concrete but I’ll mention it if I do.
  • God, the art, both tiles and character portraits, are absolutely gorgeous. The Shotar of Mars and the exec sure are beautiful dirtbags.
  • Really digging the melee and opportunity attack systems.
  • Sometimes it feels like units move a little too slow when commanding a larger army. Having to wait for a unit to complete moving before clicking to fire kind of drags the pace down a little when you’re just trying to take down something with a lot of health using a bunch of little guys.
  • I’m wishing while playing there was a way see at a glance that a unit has used all their cooldowns. I noticed they darken when they’ve used all their cooldowns plus a surge action, but obviously not every unit can do that in a turn.
  • The game zooms out when tab-cycling units, which is kind of jarring.
  • Actually this is kind of a funny bug: if you tab cycle units real fast (e.g. to check for ones that haven’t fired yet), the camera kind of starts to go out of control, sliding where it thinks it needs to even when you try to move it elsewhere.
  • Speaking of zooming, I’d love if there was a zoom level between the “close” and “far” ones. Or even just more gradual zooming, though I would understand if that gets a bit too computationally expensive or something given how big the maps can be.
  • When zoomed out, dragging the map feels kind of slippery to me, like it gets too fast from out under my mouse. WASD is a little fast for me too. Would be nice to adjust those speeds in an options menu or something.
  • The save menu is a bit tough to navigate. Would be nice to filter autosaves from manual saves, or maybe have a max number of autosaves feature?
  • The logistics are good. They definitely push the right buttons for me.

Anyway, Cantata seems to have a ton of promise so far. Looking forward to finishing what’s there in the campaign and then dorking around in the modding tools.

Thanks for taking the time to write this out! Happy to respond to some of this, but first thanks for the kind words! Really glad our weird strategy game is resonating with people.

  • Sometimes I seem to be unable to set certain supply lines. Can’t tell if this is a bug or I’m doing something wrong. I have a save with the problem reproduced if it’s not something you’re already repro-ing on your end, though not sure where to send it if you want it.

Definitely send over the save! DM me here or Discord or whatever

  • Sometimes it feels like units move a little too slow when commanding a larger army. Having to wait for a unit to complete moving before clicking to fire kind of drags the pace down a little when you’re just trying to take down something with a lot of health using a bunch of little guys.

We’re defintiely trying to work on things to make this better in the future - it’s a main point of issue right now in EA.

  • I’m wishing while playing there was a way see at a glance that a unit has used all their cooldowns. I noticed they darken when they’ve used all their cooldowns plus a surge action, but obviously not every unit can do that in a turn.

We just added this in the latest build! Press the E key to view this exact info.

  • The game zooms out when tab-cycling units, which is kind of jarring.

Definitely need to fix this!

  • Actually this is kind of a funny bug: if you tab cycle units real fast (e.g. to check for ones that haven’t fired yet), the camera kind of starts to go out of control, sliding where it thinks it needs to even when you try to move it elsewhere.

And this…

  • Speaking of zooming, I’d love if there was a zoom level between the “close” and “far” ones. Or even just more gradual zooming, though I would understand if that gets a bit too computationally expensive or something given how big the maps can be.

We’re looking at a few options here. The main reason we didn’t add in-between yet was to keep pixels crisp, but enough people want it that we may provide some sort of half-step zooms.

  • The save menu is a bit tough to navigate. Would be nice to filter autosaves from manual saves, or maybe have a max number of autosaves feature?

Also looking at better options here! I agree its sort of weird!


Excited for you to keep playing and help the game grow with everyone!

Attach below is a save for which I can’t connect supply lines. Sending plating from the garage to the supply node doesn’t seem to work.

Supply_Lines_Can’t_Connect_ch1_R22_2022-05-12_115852.csave (893.6 KB)

Ah! This was a “feature” that we’re removing in the next patch. The issue is that you can’t connect supply lines back to buildings that were supplying you. Because the Garage was supplied by the node, the garage can’t supply the node.

However, this is a residual system that was part of an older version of the supply system, so we’re removing this in the next patch!