I wrote up some tips. You may want to try to figure out the game yourself before reading. I left out some details to not spoil everything I figured out. The tips may not make much sense if you haven’t played through the game a couple times or watched some gameplay. The developers put up videos of the first 3 characters on normal and explained some stuff. After playing some myself, I watched https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLP_yl9kP6A which gives a good introduction to how to play the trooper and the basics of the game. They don’t play very optimally but it’s at least partly on purpose.
Trooper is the simplest character. I finished NG4 with him pretty easily, but lost my first NGmax attempt due to his poor mobility and range. Winning NG games will get you extra xp gems, so if you’re losing with some other characters and want to unlock more skills or unlock witch, progress your trooper through some NGs.
Oracle and witch are my favorites so far. I like using logic to figure out what tiles could be what. You’ll often want to use dark energy right before chasing the king so you can immediately leave the map so the guys it reveals/summons are irrelevant.
For oracle and witch, when there are no revealed enemies to rush you, use logic as much as you can to safely reveal tiles. You can’t always figure everything out logically, so you’ll be forced to guess sometimes, which is when you figure out the most efficient way to spend mana or item charges on a guess.
Deadends are safe and the king is always on the last deadend you find. All road tiles have to connect with no loops. I don’t think 4-way road tiles exist. Think carefully about what else you can figure out logically about what tiles can be what.
Look through the library for which abilities go up to 2 damage when you get them a 2nd or 3rd time. Abilities gaining more damage is a really important breakpoint.
For trooper and charger, you don’t want to just explore all the logically safe tiles first because that wastes mana restore. A lot of trooper gameplay is going to the most forward point near roads you can get to safely and roundhousing to reveal more and maybe hit enemies.
For trooper (and everyone), when fighting enemies, take advantage of their clock. Don’t just kill them as fast as possible. E.g. reposition to roundhouse them again from a new spot that will reveal more of the map at the same time. Note that hitting enemies resets their clock.
You can’t pass your turn, so sometimes you need to plan ahead about what tile you need to be on when, and sometimes being on the ideal tile at the best moment isn’t possible just from moving around with trooper or charger. The other characters have diagonal movement so they can generally waste a turn by walking in a triangle instead of just going back and forth to make the timing work out.
Write down how many deadends are on each level. It seems to be consistent.
You can often return to Chovy’s Shop before chasing the king rather than making all your purchasing decisions when you first find it.
Arrows and throwing knives are cheap. Don’t be afraid to use them to conserve energy. Chovy’s is common to let you buy them back, though if there are specific rules for what levels it spawns on, I don’t know yet. It’s never on level 10.
I haven’t figured out the exact rules for what the gym vs. smith can have or how many different skills you can get in a run. It seems like maybe some new skills won’t show up when you already have multiple similar skills or enough total skills, but I’m not sure.
Games always last 10 levels. I haven’t lost on level 10 yet. Don’t hoard resources for the end too much.