I like the idea of having a DF inspired multiplayer game. Also Yukhin = Stone Age (from the in-game credits) cool.
Your academic/research is on the technical, marketing or psychology area?
Because the survey points more towards marketing than technical
Issues or Suggestions:- I like the art/design, but it reminds me way too much of Gnomoria. Well, it's been one or two years since I played Gnomoria, so it could be the same tileset and I wouldn't even know it..but you might want to be careful about those things if you go commercial.
- There are many grammar/typos - I doubt alpha-accepting and indie gamers care about that (I don't), but fix those before (and if) you show it to someone 'important' or showcase it somewhere. At least from my experience, "important" people get the wrong image very quickly by the stupidiest things. You could show them the ultimate game and they would still try to shoot you down because there's a typo on the menu. (Maybe my experience is negative, but it's always better to be safe
)
- Maybe this is one of the known issues, but I found the animations a bit choppy (my fps is at max though), not sure if this is what you're going for.
- Once the characters sleep, they sleep for a long time compared to all other activities they perform (at first, I thought they went braindead) - would be cool to give some feedback to the player of the actual sleep status or a little "progress bar". Also being able to force them to wake up once a zone is removed.
- An "area" selection would be a good priority feature before things get bigger, instead of clicking on each tree/tile to define area/harvest etc.
- A way to move the camera with the mouse (using right click/middle click) to pan will be needed on bigger maps. Of course, zoom, rotation and transparency will also be critical, but you got that on your list already
Well, not sure you'll still proceed with development, but it's the foundation for a nice sandbox multiplayer game.
It does look and feel a bit too similar to Gnomoria to me in this very early stage, but it can easily shape up to be its own game if you decide so.
Good luck!