I love the concept for this game! The time management mechanics are very creative, there's a great sense of progression and opening up of possibilities, and it has one of the cleanest, most understandable UIs in modern gaming. However, I would also like to give a few pieces of constructive criticism. These are entirely subjective and reflect only my personal enjoyment of the game.
Note: I will be using the terms "early-game" and "late-game" to refer to overall progression across loops. If I need to talk about progression within a loop, I will use "early-loop" and "late-loop" instead.
- Possibly my biggest problem, due to being the cause of several other problems, is how much water becomes a non-issue late-game. Both Santorini and Astrape have more than enough water that it has literally never been the thing I was worrying about in those facilities (in Astrape even when the water recycler breaks) and the water crates at the dam make it very easy to have enough water for that long journey as well. This makes the decision of which system to sacrifice at Astrape an incredibly easy one, as well as simply giving me one less resource to juggle overall, when having to balance resources and make hard decisions is one of my favorite parts of the game. It is also a contributing factor to my next issue.
- The generator is incredibly overpowered to the point of making any other possible loadout for the rover basically unviable, which makes me feel bored and stuck in the exact same equipment every time, rather than trying anything creative. I see several different causes for this, which are as follows:
- The fuel for the generator is extremely plentiful, as well as being concentrated in only two places. As long as you successfully make it to Laurion, you will literally never need supplemental power, even using the mining machine motors. Making fuel a little harder to get might be helpful.
- Despite the warning about the generator taking up all the space in the rear compartment, it doesn't really come up that you need to put something else in there. The only other thing that goes in there is the water recycler, which you never need beyond the point where you first make it to the dam due to the first problem. Working on the water problem is one plan of action, but it would also be interesting to see something else that can go next to the water recycler in a future update.
- Lastly, the second set of solar panels, which represents the only other way to get power on the go, is in the same place as the generator fuel cells, making the routing no different no matter which one you choose. Either one moving to a different location would make it more interesting.
- The option to drive directly to the dam from Talos simply doesn't work out. There's no way to get enough food in Talos to even come close to making the drive to another facility, not to mention it doesn't actually save any time because you need the solar panels to get enough power and so can't get the mining motors later.
- The random little "explore", "read diary", etc. actions that basically just get you flavor text make me unreasonably happy and I want more.
- I'm a big fan of the "event" mechanic and would love to see more creative uses of it. Ideas include:
- More events similar to the dam event, where you need to arrive somewhere within a narrow window of time.
- "Do something and then wait for something to happen" actions that work on a larger timescale, e.g. pushing a button in one facility and then something happens exactly 12 minutes later in another facility.
- A combination of the previous two, where you can set up your own exact time window, but you have to do it far in advance and if something unexpected happens, you're out of luck.
- There are a few points (mainly the dam and the power-surge-control aspect of Astrape), where the meta-progression feels a little too fast, because as soon as I succeed once, even if it was by a fluke, I never need to worry about that mechanic again. Guarding the way to bypass the mechanic completely behind 2-3 successes seems like a better idea.
- The part in Astrape where you have to get three different parts to repair the drone is literally just a fetch quest and isn't fun.
- As I believe a few commenters have already pointed out, it would be cool to give the players the option to make their own combined actions. The best way to handle that would probably to just have an option titled "Start New Combined Action", which would add any action you take to the combined action, until you press a corresponding "End New Combined Action" button.
- The Laurion artifact felt very disappointing, especially after the hype of the first artifact. I don't have any specific ideas, but it definitely needs to feel more powerful.
- Near the very end, it took me a while to figure out where I was still missing persistent actions. I would have appreciated if the "You're thinking about..." flavor text near the beginning of each loop were a little more specific.