It's not shown in the video, but you can tap on any portrait in the top right and see that play area immediately. We're also experimenting with other ways to make sure you have all the information you need during your turn.
Any chance of environment effect animations? Would be sick to see a kracken tenticle explode from a wall or something when it hits the board. That would be rediculous
Yes, and have hero faces turn blue with oxygen leak, horrible scarring from Fire in the Biosphere, Velociraptors ripping bloody limbs off. . .
I'm down with this.
So here's the not-so-short answer on multi-player as it currently stands (and I can't stress enough that this is a work in progress and no final decisions have been made):
Through the natural course of development, we will be building pass & play first (the game playing on a single device, with either 1 or multiple people participating). Depending on several factors, we will likely begin work on network multiplayer during the same time, or shortly afterwards. Since the lion's share of that work is "behind the scenes" so to speak, if we feel that the pass and play version is working well, we would consider releasing it with local play only. This allows us to get the game into player's hands as quickly as we can, without having to wait for us to completely bughunt the network code first. Some of you may know that Pandemic recently went this route and, while some definitely felt let down by that decision, it's allowed the game to begin building the audience that they will need to keep it going (on the digital side).
It would also give us a much larger group of testers if we then released the network play as "open beta" from within the app. The digital card game Solforge has done this and it seems to be working well for them.
again - none of this is final decision. Our main goal is to faithfully bring the game to digital first. how it will be released, and what features will be included in that are things that we are still actively working on. Thanks for the question!
When I play, I enjoy both being able to follow what other players are doing and being able to think about what I'm going to do at the same time. That requires both seeing the other players' actions while being able to simultaneously seeing my own options.
In a pass and play game and/or with a single screen, doing this sort of thing is going to be quite difficult.
At a table, we can see all of the cards in play and sometimes people with play with open hands. Even in a G+ hangout or over Skype, we will usually play either with a spreadsheet that shows what is in play and/or with a camera pointed at the board setup.
As much fun as I think the pictures of the background and the cool effects of moving around from one player to another are, they don't seem to facilitate being able to see more than one deck/play area at a time.
I can get behind that thinking, with multiplayer. As long as it happens, I'm happy.
It's looking reasonably polished for the state of development it's in. Still on track for Spring 2014?
We understand this, and are planning to include an "overview" mode where you can see things in a bit more traditional way. The tricky part there is that a typical game of Sentinels can easily have way too much happening to show everything all at once, even on an iPad screen. We'll be iterating on that idea though because we think it's important to have, especially for experienced players. The "cool" view will be the default, but you'll be able to play it the game in the overview mode instead if you like, and switch between them at any time.
Spring 2014 is still our goal.
In the computer game Artemis, there are different views for different stations on a starship bridge. One of the available views is 'Observer', which is great for letting people watching the game see an action-packed first-person view of what's in front of the ship.
If the electronic version of Sentinels of the Multiverse were similar -- a series of views that are connected into a server -- than a spare tablet could have the overview view, while each hero had their own view.
That looks pretty great, just one thing; Tachyon had a Fleet of Foot AND a Pushing the limits in her hand. Why on Earth did she ignore BOTH of them and play SUCKER PUNCH INSTEAD!?
You didn't read the thread first, did you? It was explained. 
I thought you guys were kidding at first, nerding out about what cards the demo played, but the more you keep doing it, the more I wonder. ;) What cards they played isn't important, of course.
I agree that having an overview setting will be helpful. The demo only focused on the current player's turn, and every time it swooshed away from a player, I felt a tug because I wanted to see what card they'd drawn and how it fit in with their other cards, but the demo was moving too quickly for that.
I don't know if this is a widely-held opinion, but while I loved how the view swooshed around the Megalopolis building, I wished there was actually a 3D figure of my character standing on the roof when the view stopped at my position. The way it is now, the view would swoosh to the new 3D position, but there's nothing actually there. If it's just cards, then changing 3D perspective doesn't really add much.
I think overall, it looks great. Far better than I expected.
I'm really impressed--I really like the layout of the app, especially with the target hp counters in the corner.
However, I'd also like to have an option to either speed up or skip the hero transition animations and/or sound effects. While they're cool to look at, I can see them getting repetitive after 20 or so games. I do appreciate the different sound effects based on damage type: fire sounds different from melee sounds different from projectile. Very nice!
Lateralis, I'm pretty sure Spiff is hacking into our chat room. 
I'd like to echo what Spiff said, and say that -- given that I HAVE all the sets and friends to play with regularly -- I'd PROBABLY only be interested in PURCHASING this if it had online multiplayer; perhaps a lobby-system or friend list, even?
The other thing is making sure that the more nuanced rules are followed correctly; as simple as SotM is on face value, there are some odd interactions in it, and -- from an OCD standpoint -- it would really irk me if any of them were NOT followed correctly. Including, but not limited to, the fact that heroes choose in all instances of ambiguity, like multiple targets being tied for highest and/or lowest and/or second-highest/lowest (it is possible for all heroes to simultaneously fall into all of those categories), timing conflicts with the new ruling on that (Imbued Fire vs. Twist the Ether, etc.), redirections interacting with damage buffs and reductions, Fixed Point in general (especially with heroes who can break it, like Omnitron-X, Mr. Fixer, and the Naturalist), etc.
Also chaining plays and powers; Argent Adept and the Scholar can get pretty convoluted pretty quickly, with cards like Don't Dismiss Anything and Vernal Sonata.
Paranoia aside, though, it looks great! I'll keep my eye on it!
Random non-structured thought dump!
First thing I noticed was the music, I've heard it somewhere before and I immediately wanted an option to turn it off (yeah yeah, I'm sure you have sound controls in there but for some reason it really irked me).
I would like to have seen a multiple damaging effect (hero choice), just to see how it plays out.
If you're making this "pass and play" how are you handling card draws for others? e.g. Fleet of Foot. Do you have to pass the pad around, while it waits for some sort of OK sign to move on to the next person? Does it just display what each person drew on their turn?
There was no effect to show that everybody gained a hit point when Motivational Charge was used (it did happen though), I would like to see both a plus and a minus when people gain or lose HP.
I think the discard pile is too far off screen, I would prefered it below the deck as there is screen space available there. With multiple effects that allow you to dig something out of your trash you don't want to spend time trying to select the tiny bit of the screen to look through your trash. Tachyon in particular always wants to know what's in the trash (an automated burst count for her would be awesome!)
Can you look at someone else's hand during your turn? I would like to know if Fanatic is going to play End of Days before I play Impromtu Invention!
Hmmm, on a similar note, do you get to look at your hand before the first villain turn?
Is there any way you can make the HP numbers on the cards change? I don't want to have to look at the cards to see what is out and they look at the top right to see how much HP everything has... wait you did that with the Mobile Defense Platform so it is possible.
I didn't like the fact that you couldn't see all targets in play in the top right summary, if you are going to use that then put everything that has HP on there. I don't want to think I can hit Baron Blade and then find out when I select my power that the MDP wasn't quiet as dead as the previous player thought it was.
Also, is there a way to choose a different power if you misclick? (mistouch just sounds wrong)
The nemesis bonus was not applied when Legacy took a hit
Baron Blade's trash read 0s at the start of his second turn, and 2 at the end, it should have read 2 the whole way through (first turn Slash & Burn and a destroyed platform).
I also noticed that the text on Pushing the Limits is not up to date (and Sonic Vortex now that I look back at it).
EDIT:
Don't walk away thinking I was disappointed in it, it looks awesome and will be happy to buy it if/when a multiplatform/multiplayer aspect is added!
A few ideas.
If it does get to a multiplayer mode, you could let players Flag a card they would like others to know they have, and have that show up where others could see.
As for using it with sidekick, you could create a crossover app where you could type in card names of cards you drew, and have that relay into the other game. I have no clue how that would work (or if it would not) but you could pick your hero, and the deck would be known on all devices that were not running sidekick. You would need to be able to input cards drawn or played and then have prompts come back when others interacted with you.
Actually that would take some major changes to Sidekick to make it work.
first watch through I'm sold i'll line up for your to take my money
Just wanted to ask ... Are the damage types all going to have different sound effects?
will there be the ability to make your own decks in the app?
On a silly note:
Will we be able to choose "fluffy bunny damage" for Mr. Fixer? There are some people who would be disappointed if they couldn't 
I liked the differnt effects for the damage types. That was a nice touch.
However, I'm not a fan of the 3D background as it seems it would slow the game down with rendering when it's not integral to the gameplay. An otion for a fixed background would be apprecairted.
Also, what version of iOs will we need for this? I've only got an iPAD v1 so if it's IOs7 (which I'm guessing it will be), I will be a poor panda.