This has a lot of potential. However, the game as it currently stands is in an incredibly rough state, which makes sense since this is an alpha. Below are some points I wrote down while playing.
Things I liked:
Aesthetic and music are very enjoyable. They fit the game very well.
Core gameplay is solid. (Using cameras to move around and check on inmates, scheduled behavior, etc.)
Issues:
Performance takes a major hit when prisoners are moving all together to another screen. Typically this causes frames to dip from 40 -> 20 frames. Notably this happened consistently when the prisoners simultaneously leave the cafeteria.
Can't use the cleanup option? (Unsure of how the mop works)
Around day 5 the option to send someone to solitary confinement broke. The robot that was supposed to move prisoners stopped responding and selecting the option did nothing.
In the bathroom there are three toilets but the prisoners only seem to gather behind one.
The word "cannon" is misspelled as "canon".
How to switch back to hand cursor after selecting electric shock/megaphone? (If there was a way I couldn't figure it out, and I don't remember it being mentioned)
Make cursor appear ABOVE the UI icons (clock, room buttons, megaphone, etc.) instead of underneath.
Suggestions:
Hand cursor changing sizes per screen can be annoying. (however, if this is a stylistic choice, then it might be better to keep it.)
Maybe have some kind of mood indicator?
Weird jumpscare when someone dies? (Don't like this, hard to tell who the perpetrator is? Even more difficult since it's hard to differentiate prisoners from each other, since they have the same sprite)
Add some method to speed up time? (Each day is too long)
Have some kind of ticking clock animation to make it easier to see that time is progressing.
Regardless, what you have here is a solid base to work on, but it needs a lot of polish.
Thank for for playing, I'll defiantly look and read u[n this in the future to try to figure out what needs to be done.
The frame rate going down has to due to the engine itself and trying to calculate the whole map for the pathfinding. I cannot really do anything about it, sadly. The only thing I can try to do is to make it not as bad/noticeable.
The cursor's position is weird, since for it to work with the turrets correctly, it has to be on the same layer. It's why the cursor changes it's size due to the camera size being different, sort of showing the differences in size but it could be better.. But the UI layer is above the base layer and moving the cursor to the UI layer makes it not work as well as it should, and I had it the way it was for the functionality. I'll 100% make the Mop mechanic better and adding a way to go back to the default mouse cursor. But due to some functionality it has to act weird or else problems come up.
The Solitary has a bug where if someone dies when inside of it, it breaks. It's a quick fix.
I'll make it where there is an effect on prisoners who plan to do something or are on low mood since that is what determines some stuff like murder. I'll think about a good way to add a more clock animation as well. I've already decided to change the time for each hour to be 30 seconds instead of 60 and playing around with it is a lot more fun and doesn't need speed up as time goes by very quickly.
Thanks for all the advice and I'll try to polish it as much as I can.
I may not be the most efficient prison keeper AI, I roughly halve my prisoners every day. But it's not my fault shocking them is so much fun.
Love the art style here. The intros were super stylish with the ASCII effects and the ship looks great.
I think I managed to encounter one bug: The mop doesn't seem to work for me when I click on it, I couldn't remove the yellow streak someone left near the showers.
Would be cool to have a time fast-forward button, I think 30 days is a bit long with the current hour speed, especially when there's some down time, like when the prisoners are in bed.
This has a lot of potential, I think with a more few quality-of-life additions this will be pretty good! Looking forward to prisoner mode too!
Thank you, I'll take everything with this into consideration. I think I should have the HP regenerate for the prisoners while they are sleeping. I might reduce the time between each hour by half since each hour is 60 seconds. 30 seconds per hour should be good enough to make it faster while allowing prisoners to do things. The Mop basically orders the security bot to go to the Janitor's room to prepare to clean and they have to stay there for a bit before it can be cleaned. Maybe I should have said it better in the tutorial or rework it.
Comments
This has a lot of potential. However, the game as it currently stands is in an incredibly rough state, which makes sense since this is an alpha. Below are some points I wrote down while playing.
Things I liked:
Issues:
Suggestions:
Regardless, what you have here is a solid base to work on, but it needs a lot of polish.
Thank for for playing, I'll defiantly look and read u[n this in the future to try to figure out what needs to be done.
The frame rate going down has to due to the engine itself and trying to calculate the whole map for the pathfinding. I cannot really do anything about it, sadly. The only thing I can try to do is to make it not as bad/noticeable.
The cursor's position is weird, since for it to work with the turrets correctly, it has to be on the same layer. It's why the cursor changes it's size due to the camera size being different, sort of showing the differences in size but it could be better.. But the UI layer is above the base layer and moving the cursor to the UI layer makes it not work as well as it should, and I had it the way it was for the functionality. I'll 100% make the Mop mechanic better and adding a way to go back to the default mouse cursor. But due to some functionality it has to act weird or else problems come up.
The Solitary has a bug where if someone dies when inside of it, it breaks. It's a quick fix.
I'll make it where there is an effect on prisoners who plan to do something or are on low mood since that is what determines some stuff like murder. I'll think about a good way to add a more clock animation as well. I've already decided to change the time for each hour to be 30 seconds instead of 60 and playing around with it is a lot more fun and doesn't need speed up as time goes by very quickly.
Thanks for all the advice and I'll try to polish it as much as I can.
I may not be the most efficient prison keeper AI, I roughly halve my prisoners every day. But it's not my fault shocking them is so much fun.
Love the art style here. The intros were super stylish with the ASCII effects and the ship looks great.
I think I managed to encounter one bug: The mop doesn't seem to work for me when I click on it, I couldn't remove the yellow streak someone left near the showers.
Would be cool to have a time fast-forward button, I think 30 days is a bit long with the current hour speed, especially when there's some down time, like when the prisoners are in bed.
This has a lot of potential, I think with a more few quality-of-life additions this will be pretty good! Looking forward to prisoner mode too!
Thank you, I'll take everything with this into consideration. I think I should have the HP regenerate for the prisoners while they are sleeping. I might reduce the time between each hour by half since each hour is 60 seconds. 30 seconds per hour should be good enough to make it faster while allowing prisoners to do things. The Mop basically orders the security bot to go to the Janitor's room to prepare to clean and they have to stay there for a bit before it can be cleaned. Maybe I should have said it better in the tutorial or rework it.