Love the concept. Beat the demo in a bit over an hour, like 1:20. I filled 4 small boxes at a time with ducks and put them in the pit in short succession to get big combos for early money. After that I figured out that I could stick a fan right on the output of the duck maker to shoot them towards the pit without them ever touching the ground. Built a backboard with some panels and used magnets and some more fans to direct them into the pit quickly. Set up a fan on the auto duck maker and all I really need is to get the ducks close to my magnet/fan/panel backboard. It was pretty smooth sailing from then on out because I did not need boxes at all and the ducks only made 2 or 3 bounces in total in their journey (one off the backboard usually, then one or two down the sides of the pit as the fan launches them straight down). The reason I share this in such detail is because I want to make sure this is an intended way of beating it. I toyed around with making panel-box pipes with fans and magnets to direct them in, but launching them through the air as soon as they shoot out of the machine was so much more efficient once you lined the fan up right. Still, love the game idea and could see a lot of potential in the systems. Mechanics that force the player to deliver a certain rate of ducks would be interesting, or requiring bulk "feedings" that require the player to make a method of accumulating ducks and dumping them all at once for a big combo. A "quality control" mechanic might be interesting too, in which ducks have varying levels of quality and can require the player to sort the ducks somehow. There's ways I could imagine you doing that using the physics engine, such as a "bad" duck that weighs more and so will be able to be sorted using fans or magnets. Obviously that lends towards traditional conveyor built style automation. Is a conveyor belt in the cards for this game or is the point supposed to be untraditional methods for automation.
Viewing post in Project P.I.T.T. - Demo comments
Hey ! Thank you so much for the detailed feedback, it is always interesting to smart ways to beat the game :)
It is intended that people find ways to beat it in a way that feels not intended, but works, it is a sandbox and I want players to fins smart ways or even break the game, as long as they have fun it's ok (I fix issues and bugs killing the gun out of it but keep the funny ones in), so yeah, not everything is designed and I know people will find ways to beat the full game I never thought about but that's what's the game is about yes !
The game won't have traditional conveyors but tools will be available to build your own conveyor system, and I'm trying to make it so there is not one unique solution for it and people can play how they want (and if putting all the ducks and other products manually in is the way the player want to play the game, that will be possible, even if that's not the most efficient way to do it)
I have already some different ways to make more profit with similar (but different) to what you described for the quality control, but I designed it as a bonus and not a mandatory way to do it (I'll have a lot of balancing to do haha)
I know with only the demo content it is a bit hard so see where I'm going with this and I hope the full game won't disappoint.
Thank you again for your feedback, it helps shaping it toward something not disappointing (that's what I'm hopping haha)