On one hand, it is pretty nice to see another game step into the ring with stuff like terraformental or increlution, I love those games!
but WOW this game is cripplingly strict, since it only gives static upgrades in terms of time saving or extra resources. Terraformental , Increlution, Idle Loops, literally every single time-loop game has a skill system of some kind to let you slowly become better, but this one doesn't?
please add some kind of skill-growth system, or else this game is going to be a strictly puzzle game with waiting elements more than anything, because any slight deviation right now is strictly negative for you.
if "puzzle game" is the main aspect, PUT THAT FIRST, cause i come in expecting idle incremental with some puzzle aspects, not a puzzle game dressed like an idle game.
Thanks for the feedback :) First of all being inspired by something does not mean that it copies every element or mechanic. In this case I wanted to keep the looping themes but leaning more into puzzle elements. In a puzzle there is a set of solutions, but failing to find it does not give you anything if not learning from your mistakes. This does not mean that we can’t reward for a failed attempt, but it would be pretty hard to balance, we will see what we can do :)
I came here to say the same thing that a puzzle game should feel like a puzzle game. The puzzle nature seems solid at first, but I think it becomes too complicated as the time-based events come into play, because the player needs to balance too many things to make any progress at all.
As many other commenters have pointed out, there's a certain scaling mechanic in most other games of this style (a skill system or, in the case of Terraformental version 0.3 and later, a familiarity system based on total repetitions of an action) which makes a run feel just a little less "wasted" even if the player messes up somewhere along the way. I think the scaling doesn't have to be huge; repeating the same action sequence 1000 loops in a row does not need to guarantee passing all challenges. In an adventure incremental, though, the player needs to feel that they are getting somewhere at their own pace. In the current state of the game, most "persistent" actions (i.e., actions which only need to be completed in one loop rather than repeated across loops) are quite rare and also difficult to accomplish, often requiring gathering all available batteries and being efficient with charging. Sometimes, completing one persistent action leaves the player character with power to last 10 - 20 extra seconds but not enough to complete another persistent action which feels like a huge waste because there aren't any ways to even make tiny amounts of progress. The all-or-nothing approach is common in puzzle games, but if that's what the game wants, it shouldn't look like it would give the player a sense of constant progression.
(I won't go into there not being multiple lanes of progress the player can follow, because I'm assuming that it's because of the small amount of content currently added, and the game might recover naturally without forcing anything.)
There's another thing I've noticed, and that the game isn't giving the full immersion of real-time gameplay. Whether to continue on the immersion route or the puzzle route is up to the developer but with the current setup I think it will actually do better in a "turn-based" system (where actions have resource cost and time cost but the consumption is instant or near-instant). It might also be a good idea to look into other mechanics like action queueing and an undo option. The game seems to have a lot of potential but, as it is, it just doesn't commit to being either an adventure incremental or a puzzle game. There are many great things it can become, and we'll be looking forward to finding out!
An extra idea based solely on my personal taste: maybe the story can use some improvement... The robot's whining also gets on my nerves after several loops; it's a huge contrast to the optimistic narration in Terraformental's logs.
(I brought up Terraformental several times because of the similarity in the story and certain mechanics. Funnily enough, my first impression was that this game was a Terraformental parody since people love to joke about the fast resource consumption. It took me a few minutes to realise that the game is being serious.)
Thanks a lot for the very thoughtful feedback!
As for the Time events being too complicated I agree with the fact that there is no way to always keep track of them, just knowing when they finish, we plan on imporving the events tab to show all active events, for better tracking
As for the constant progression, we may consider adding one as many have pointed it out and it would solve the feels bad moments when you fail a loop and get nothing out of it (even though you are technically learning from your mistakes)
As for the turn based arguement you are totally right, in fact, near the end it basically becomes near instant, and we want to lean towards that as I enjoy idle games but hate having to wait (that seems paradoxical lol). But we start not with instant actions to let the player understand better that actions cost energy over Time and having them see the energy bar drain slowly helps with that.
As for the story it can definitely improve, what do you mean by “the robot whining”? Do you feel like it is? ahahahah
I would love to discuss this further over Discord Thank you for playing!