As you said this is a personal experiment. It's already quite impressive (compared to the regular slop that gets released everyday though), especially on a technical level but it's not focused and there's no real idea, no real game design vision/work that would place this game on track toward something great.
But who knows? Maybe by playing with stuff the good ideas will emerge? Maybe all this skill will turn the next project into a masterwork?
I can definitely see what you mean, right now it's more of an interactive ant farm than an actual game. If I continue with this, the next step would be to add basic survival mechanics, rent, consequences for failing to manage those, and other things to spend credits on.
That should at least provide a baseline to incentivise the player to engage with future content.
Alternatively, I've considered making a dungeon crawler and pulling some mechanics from here. Less simulator and more traditional rpg with sim elements. I don't think it would be quite as interesting, but it might be a better game experience.
Holidays have kept me too busy to really plan my next move, but I'm glad that people see some of the potential in this
