The last update is really great! It felt much more immersive. I was hooked for more than an hour! You should consider implementing a save system. I would like to continue and explore all the planets.
I really like incidents. They hooked me in at the beginning. But also have some feedback to make em event better:
- It's ok to have immediate result on some steps, but I feel many steps could take longer to resolve. Especially at the beginning I was confused as I got some evolutionary incident that should take months or even years to resolve but after completing it I got my first quest to build the shelter for my starting population :D
- In the late game I felt the incidents do not matter. I had a lot of tech and happiness, so the gain or harm was rather on the narrative layer only. It would be nice to make these incidents have more impact on my progress.
Other minor things:
- The bottom panel buttons do not work on entire area. I feel top halves of the buttons do not work. It was pretty confusing at the beginning.
- I think you should not remove already built structures from the building menu. I did not remember all the bonuses and when I wanted to check em out I couldn't. Maybe clicking on the slot could show me the building stats?
- Upgrading rocket on a planet makes sense, but is so cumbersome that I would make it possible to upgrade ship anywhere. I did a rookie mistake and went to explore 2nd planet without upgrading my ship. Because of that I had to face a dilemma: "should I go further for the next planet or should I go back for upgrades". Maybe there's something I'm missing here?
- Asteroids and the tech resources disappear pretty quickly when out of screen. I suppose you have some cleanup logic for things out of screen. I would extend it by some margin, or extend the margin by far. I lost a lot of resources this way. It was pretty frustrating and felt unnatural.
- I like that asteroids can crash and leave you free resources. Especially when you're travelling fast. Maybe you could increase collision chance at the beginning to speed up the growth?
- Sounds are cool, but I would make em less repetitive - especially the asteroid explosion. It sounds so cool at first. But then further explosions are very repetitive. Maybe you could save this SFX for really big asteroids only?
- I don't like the '7' number. Got confused about it at the beginning.
Ps. I reached 30k population but got only two planets at the end of my session. Probably was too scared about decreasing the overall happiness :)