Satisfying and relaxing to watch, the maze portion was easily the best part. Everything past that honestly felt tacked on to extend the length and wasn't very well balanced, especially finding 100 secrets with only very poor options for increasing the rate of knowledge gain. Would have been cool to see an expansion on the maze stuff, as it was easily the coolest part of the game and definitely the most interesting to interact with.
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thanks for playing, and thank you for the feedback!
> wasn't very well balanced
I 100% agree
> only very poor options for increasing the rate of knowledge gain
Part 2 is both underpowered and poorly communicated. Liquid rate per second = `log10(knowledge / 100) * (1 + 0.1*secret)` - so my goal was having players balance gaining knowledge via amplifiers, then removing amps to gain more liquid knowledge to spend on upgrades. I wonder if knowing that would've made a difference to your playstyle and be less tedious.
> felt tacked on to extend the length
> Would have been cool to see an expansion on the maze stuff
I really appreciate you saying this, and I really feel bad that the game made you feel this in the first place as that wasn't my intention.
Originally I wanted a multi-layer game, where a basic maze was the 1st layer and secrets were the 2nd (and a potential third). Then I got this 3D maze idea, which felt like something unique worth making - and I ended up spending way too much time on it, which led to two consequences: 1) I lost complete sense of how fun or not fun the maze is, and 2) there was not much time for other layers.
I started to question whether the maze is fun on it's own, especially as you get automation - there is not much to do. It is an Upgrade puzzle, but it's not that complicated of a puzzle. But then making a 2nd layer that completely moves on from the maze felt silly, wasteful, and disconnected. So I decided to pivot - make a 2nd layer that interacts with the first layer. The goal of the amplifier was to add a new resource that you balance with the maze output, while still upgrading the maze. It felt like a good compromise since you still engage with the maze yet dealing with a "harder" puzzle (expect the bad pacing of upgrades and perhaps some underpowered upgrades)
But clearly, I failed. This is the 2nd feedback I'm getting that Maze is actually fun despite my believes and that the 2nd part feels not as engaging. I do wonder if you still would have felt this way if the pacing was a bit more balanced.
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts!