WOW ! The nodes are so well designed, the way they move, the connections, and creation and upgrading is all great! Are the nodes and connections systems pre built in Godot or did you make everything? The music and sound is good too. As a mechanical demo this is perfect and could easily be turned into a full game if that is your goal, otherwise it is a great proof of concept that I would want to play more of!
Viewing post in The Merchant Game jam comments
I'm really happy you liked it! Godot has a built-in graph system (GraphEdit and GraphNode nodes) but it there is some assembly required.
I used Unreal Engines Blueprints as the main source of inspiration, with Blenders Shader Editor as a second inspiration. The music and sounds are from Ovani, who make great audio assets. I tried to add sound effects where possible, such as connecting nodes, as I believe game feel / juice is very important, even in more mechanically-focused games.
I've had over-scoped ideas for projects utilizing a node-based system, but couldn't justify the time-cost. When I saw the game jams theme, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to learn how to make the system, and get feedback on whether or not people would want to play a game like this.
I like programming, but not everyone does, so I tried to gamify it, and I want to keep it accessible while allowing player freedom for more advanced players. Once the game jam ends and I clean up the code, I plan to add more content to the game, as I ran out of time during the jam. Thank you very much for the feedback!