ThrstyMnd, the initial reaction I had to this when opening the game up was BAM. I love how it instantly sucked me right into it's world and then never proceeded to let up. Vibes were big on this and I definitely appreciate that kind of thing.
I haven't played a lot of idle/clickers, none at all really before this jam, so I'm not very familiar with genre norms. That said, it took me a little bit to find the 'Click' button. It didnt stand out from the rest of the screen.
The scoring system wasn't necessarily intuitive to me. I did see the two things I was to be balancing (sorry Im forgetting the names now out of the game), but the rate at which they moved seemed off to me in comparison to one another? I eventually pushed the click many times past being in the red and although it seemed like it should be bad, I was still making money. I wouldnt have minded the punishments being more negative I guess.
I absolutely loved the text corresponding to the different numbers. One of my favorite elements from any of the jam games I've played. Little stuff like that is super memorable to me and I think you nailed the direction you wanted to go with that.
The first time I opened the settings menu, I really loved it. Again, I thought that was perfect. As someone who's just starting out with this stuff I have a hard time balancing "awesomeness/ux", ya know? I loved the menu loading like that, and I would love designing something like that, but then having to wait that long each time you want to adjust the volume is a little clunky on the user end so it's a design decision.
Overall cool dark glitchy vibes and im down with it.
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Thanks for taking the time to give me some feedback, I really appreciate it. I think you're pretty spot on with your analysis. I'm new to gamedev and clicker games so i was kinda winging it with the design, but I knew what vibe and emotion I wanted to convey and I feel like I generally met my goal there.
My biggest lesson through this has been to include a thorough explanation and/or tutorial in my games. a lot of the elements were put in as indicators but with no explanation of what they were indicating...it was purposeful but It didn't quite translate how i'd hoped. Trust/obscurity turning red for example does lower the overall speed at which you accrue points, but under the hood I designed the game to never actually punish to the point of losing points. I actually designed it to basically go on forever. There is no end game state or win condition and the math won't break untill long after the sunn burns out (in theory). Also, the menu typing can be fast forwarded with the space bar to speed up that wait time, but I agree no one wants to watch a cut scene to change the volume.
I think if i were to try something like this again or expand on it in the future, I would start with a better in-game tutorial and then expand the prestige store to make it playable for longer. I think my biggest downfall on this project was that I got the vibe across too well without explaining why...i made things intentionally cryptic and players didn't really realize how intentional it was or did't have the context that i wasn't able to put in.
At any rate thank you for taking the time to play and comment...it was definitely a learning experience.