Post by Reeetek in Harventure Demo comments

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After having completed all upgrades, these are my findings and honest opinion:

As for the sound:

- The lo-fi background music is fine, but after progressing and having the resources destroyed quicker, it should pick up, giving a feeling of progression on the music part aswell.

- Sound effects are fine except for the stars, as their overlapping sound effect is unpleasant, it needs to be looked into (and maybe limit on how many sound effects can play at a time)

As for the IU:

- The inventory tab is redundant, as you can see upgrade costs on the upgrade tree. There be a feature added for the inventory tab, like consume X amount of a resource to apply a multiplier when collecting more.

- Area selection does not feel great, having to click twice and the resources available showing twice. This could be made easier, like adding arrows next to the level number on the area selection and moving the necessary info on the hover popup window (like extra resources for the level difficulty)

-Options menu can not be accessed in runs, please add that in. (Escape key and/or a button)

As for the gameloop:

- The resource requirements should always be balanced (maybe tally the max upgrade costs and balance them accordingly) as I have over 1000 gold and 800 leaves remaining due to the extra cactus cost of Stamina III. This has to be looked into.

- Area level benefits did not feel good enough. In the endgame was better to stay on the low tiers, having stars destroy the resources in a couple of seconds then starting a new run instead of going to the higher levels.

- There needs to be an "Overheal" mechanic or upgrade, as auto collection collects resources at maximum stamina, wasting the benefit from "Absorption" and such. All upgrades should feel beneficial, but autocollect made me question if I actually should get it or not.

- Level points and Umbracite should have an infinite sink, since they become obsolete (even if more upgrades are added later on), there should be an upgrade after all other are complete to use them to scale infinitely.

- Upgrades that can be purchased for the first time do not stand out, they need a distinctive color border that the player can notice in an instant.

- There should be an upgrade, that lets you collect (or does it by itself) all resources left on the map when it is complete.

- Some resources are not visible due to the trees, when hovering over those said resources, the ones in front of them should be semi-transparent around the cursor, also it would be nice to have the ability to click on empty tiles for strategic purposes (and an option to have the targeted tile always outlined even if it is empty).

Final words:

What we can see here, is a great base for a game that could eventually be a big hit among incremental enjoyers. A couple parts need revising, but I am looking forward to seeing and playing Harventure in the future. (And for the sake of us all, please make autoclicker disabled by default, and notify the player that it is there if they choose to use it)

After all the constructive criticism, I do Thank you for making this game and best of luck in the future.

IcyQuill116 days ago

Wow, that’s a great comment! Thanks a lot for all your feedback and suggestions, they’re super helpful. I’ll try to answer each of your points!

Sound:

I agree, the music can get a bit repetitive as progression goes on. This is probably my weakest area in game dev. Do you know any games I could check out that handle this well?
I’m currently refactoring the audio system and lowering the pitch of some sounds.

UI:

Thanks for the suggestions, I’ll work on improving the UI/UX.
Settings will be added in-game in the next update.

Gameplay:

Overheal + Absorption: I think I’ll make it so that auto-collect also triggers on-collect effects.
Endgame and levels: this is a tough one. I’m trying to find a solution without changing the game too much. Do you have any suggestions?
Resources: I’ll try to improve the resource balance.
Umbracite: the final game will include different ways to sink Umbracite.
Auto-collect after finishing a level: we’re reworking how level completion works. Maybe the level won’t end until every resource is collected.
Clicking on the ground: we’re implementing this!

Reeetek116 days ago(+1)

First of all, thank you for considering my recommendations. Here are what I can add in reply to the questions above:

As an incremental game, the two focus points should be progression, and how the game feels, therefore:

Sound:

The best example I can think of as for the music, is Tetris Effect: Connected.

The video above has many examples for how the game picks up the pace of the music with more lines completed. Maybe implement a (possibly hidden) avg. damage counter that would scale the tempo of the music while in play, perhaps after reaching a certain avg. damage switch to another, more catchy tune (look up dynamic/adaptive music and what it entails). For the beginning of the game the current music is great though.

As an alternative, you could also make it so that the number of triggered damaging effects scale music intensity. Either way, just make sure that the intensity/tempo scaling feels smooth.

Gameplay:

- For endgame and levels, having a hidden coefficient for possible damage per click (considering base damage, crit%, crit damage, extra damaging effects, etc.) and scaling level difficulty accordingly could help.

- Making the player go back to the previous level a couple times is completely fine, the issue rises when it becomes the default and obvious choice.

- Maybe even implement a function where the total number of levels completed (repeated completion of the same level would not count, just once) would unlock more options to scale up your damage. This would not change anything fundamental about the game and only add potential for keeping up with the scaling resource hp.

- Another feature that could be added later on the line, is an upgrade enabling homing of stars, or perhaps them bouncing back from the sides, as it would feel good.

- As for the required resource balancing, it is fine to have a couple rare resources that the player lacks, but it makes no sense for it to be cactus, rather make it a gemstone or something similar (if this is expanded upon, a trade-in of other resources for it could be considered thus making use of the inventory panel).

As for the rest:

- A huge positive that I did not mention before is not running into any minor or major bugs while playing (well done!), only slight inconveniences, which will eventually be ironed out.

As I stated in the beginning, focus on how the game feels and whether it provides the satisfaction the player is looking for.

Does the game scratch that itchy spot in the middle of your back? If not find out why and improve on that.

If it did until a certain point, find out when it stopped doing it and revise that point of game progression.

Best of luck!

itch.io

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