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This is a hard game, I played 12 days of this and saw no progress lmao. I love the little attention to details like swaying grass and the HQ eye following the mouse cursor. The music is really nice too, reminds me of Rimworld. I feel like there is room for improvements to lessen the friction of player interaction:

- Important informations like your credits and the send salvage team button should be visible at all times. There is no reason to make it a separate menu. This is especially true considering the game is time based where every second counts.

- The balancing is a bit off. Crops die from being stressed when enemies are near and that's okay. But the thing is, each crop takes a significant investment. The fungus, which is supposed to be your best line of defense, doesn't do nearly enough to justify their price point. This game is hard for the wrong reasons. I can't scale my farm but I'm also not losing because the HQ is overpowered, so I just spent majority of the time waiting for the night to end while the HQ slowly fires at enemies. I tried farming potatoes early and that doesn't help at all because they keep dying without fungi, and when I do plant fungi they die every night. So what gives? maybe this is intentional, maybe this is how it really how farming would be like in a nuclear winter, idk.

- Why take away controls at night time? it would've been fun trying to desperately plant fungus at night while enemies are attacking, no? Again, most of my playtime was spent looking at the HQ shooting slowly at stuff. The day time feels way too short which is unfair.

Overall, this is a well made entry held back by balance issues and questionable design decisions. I still enjoyed my time with it and I hope y'all will keep updating this game. I hope I'm not too harsh with my words, I'm hella passionate.

(1 edit)

Thanks for the feedback, Wagyu_Dev!

Yeah, I think I overdid the difficulty of Nuclear Winter, but you're right about some things.

The decision of taking away controls at nighttime was intentional, because there should have been another enemy, the mole, which you can whack it with your hammer. That would've given some more controls during the night and more engaging gameplay. I agree that it's questionable and honestly, I didn't manage to add the mole. Though, because the mole wasn't there, I had to somehow take away the player's freedom during the night, otherwise the game would've been too easy and I was not aiming for that.

I completely agree with you on the balancing. That is my weak point, I am a solo developer, so it gets a bit frustrating trying to make it fun for the player. I'm actively trying to make it better.

Daytime feeling short is also one thing that I did intentionally. During Nuclear Winter, it's almost impossible to get any bit of sunlight, which is why it's short and makes farming during the day utterly difficult. Though, I also think I overdid it haha.

I tried my best to make this game difficult but also enjoyable. Though this is the game jam version and not a full version, so I suggest you stick around and see what this turns into!