Pretty great for such a simple idea!
For feedback: The automations need to be able to be toggled on/off, instead of being permanently active. If there is a way, I couldn't find it.
Also, Patience wasn't ever a real gameplay mechanic in its current form. It regenerated on it's own faster than I could use it, and the Inner Peace upgrade was so cheap that a few levels made it something I could completely ignore. It needs to be rebalanced so it feels impactful. Maybe something that consumes that resource, like making the automations have a Patience/second cost that increases per level. That would make a loop where if I want to have better automations, I need to increase my patience generation. You could also have the line environment have a patience cost per second. For example, a weather mechanic that makes it cost +/- Patience per second to stand in line based on how hot/cold/rainy/nice it is. And maybe even things I can spend money on to resist those changes, like umbrellas and jackets.
Anyway, great first game! Keep up the good work!
You are the goat, Kendrick!
Thank you so much for your valuable feedback I’ll try to implement them tomorrow!
Since you are one of the first people to give feedback, what do you think about the upgrades in general? I feel like some of them are useless. And would you say the progress is too slow? What do you think about the logs on the right half of the screen?
Thank you so much again for the feedback, it really helps a lot!!
I beat the game in about an hour, before ever even Ascending, so I definitely don't think progress is too slow! I never really looked at the logs on the side of the screen, other than when I wanted to see how much money I was making per Let Pass. There was too much scrolling by there for me to really read it. My thoughts on upgrades, from worst to best:
Composed Smile: Even before any upgrades at all, the 10 patience cost of Let Pass is completely regenerated before it comes back off cooldown. So, making that cost less patience doesn't really mean anything. Maybe if the Let Pass automation still had the patience cost, I could see needing this upgrade. For example, automatically letting 10 people pass at 10 patience each would instantly empty your 100 patience pool. In that case, lowering that cost to only 5 or 2 would cut that cost to 50 or 20, instead. But with the automations (seemingly?) costing no resources, there isn't a reason to buy any levels in this.
Tasty Snacks: I never used this skill because I was always full on patience, so the upgrade for it isn't useful. Also, you can increase this past the 100 cap of your patience pool. Unless there is a way to raise my max patience past 100, and something that uses the patience resource, I don't need food that restores 150+ patience.
Inner Peace: Like I said, I didn't need this to begin with, and after only 5 levels in Inner Peace I had enough patience being generated per second that it made all patience costs and rewards from actions and events completely meaningless. So, not really useful unless the Patience mechanic gets updated
Bargain Briber: This is useful in the beginning, where $20 to skip 3 people isn't worth it. The people behind cut the line so frequently that you won't keep those 3 spaces, and at only $5 profit per time you Let Pass, you can only make back $15 at most. Lowering that cost at least makes it slightly profitable. But I didn't end up even using the Bribe skill until late game, when I upgraded it to let me skip a bunch of people, thus making the skill actually useful. However, by that point, the original $20 cost was trivial when I was making $65 per person I Let Pass. So overall, possibly useful in the beginning, but not by the time you actually would use the skill.
Quicker Step: This actually felt pretty balanced. I had to put a bunch of money into it to get the cooldown to half, which is on point for an idle game. However, by the time I had the money to do this, I was not using the manual skip skill anymore (auto instead), so I didn't need the upgrade.
Passive Income: This one is a fun skill to buy thematically, since it makes you feel good for having passive income. But even at level 30, I was making significantly more from my automation, as you'll see below.
Greasy Palm: This is a main upgrade for this game. Being able to skip 10, 20, 50, or (eventually for me) 100 people instead of just 3? Super useful! When I wanted to beat the game, I pumped this up to level 50 and got the Bribe automation to level 5. I was passing more people than the animation could keep up with!
Tip Jar: The REAL main upgrade for this game. I upgraded this every chance I got, eventually stopping at level 100. This skill is why I was able to buy the higher level and more expensive automation upgrades. Definitely a great upgrade. I used the Greasy Palm skill to bribe past a TON of people, then used automation to let 10 of them pass every 5 seconds, at $300 each, for $3K every 5 seconds.
Ultimately, many of these are made less impactful because your generation of money/patience scales so high so fast. If you change how patience works, it'll change everything. But I'm not a game designer, I just play a lot of idle games! So, feel free to ignore me and follow your creative vision! Good luck!
Crazy helpful!
It's insanely good to have the insight of someone playing a lot of idle games. I wrote down everything you said and will ponder about how to improve stuff. I already guessed that patience needed a rebranding, and now I have a way cleaner vision of how that could maybe be done.
The automatons costing no recourses is weird, they definitely should. I gotta look into that, maybe it's a bug or something.
Again, I can't thank you enough, but the credits hold your name now.