Its a fun game. I played all the levels.
Some levels you can't see all the way to the end from the start, and there doesn't seem to be any way to preview the level, which feels a bit unfair when I have to decide how much to wind. You could let players pan, give them a minimap, or just tween the camera moving from the goal to the start to give an overview of the level.
Level 20 "The Long Way" was the hardest level by a huge margin. Much harder than the final level. Its difficulty felt a little out of place (or at least, like it should be the last level rather than the second last). I spent a lot of tries on it and eventually trying to wind the same amount with a mouse each time became tedious. It was fine on the other levels but the huge number of repeats and difficult steering got to me.
Please give my entry a try - https://william-ritson.itch.io/alchemy-isle
Viewing post in Playtesting!??
Woah does multiplayer actually work!? I wanna make a multiplayer game so bad I have tried and failed so many times.
First playing I could use some visual and audio feedback that I can place the castle. I couldn't figure out where to click for about 30 seconds. One second try I now see there are darker circles, if the cursor changed when hovering that would help me (and a audio fx playing on mouseenter would be nice).
I'm a sucker for low poly islands, the wind effect is especially nice. The dial shows up with 16 symbols and they aren't traditional resource icons like timber, stone, etc. so a new player won't understand what they are until they navigate the build menus with previews or are smarter than me (admittedly a low bar).
I like that you can't make a lot of purchases turn 1, I think a new player should only make 1 or 2 decisions turn 1.
The little popups you get for gaining resources lights up the dopamine receptors in my monkey brain. Making the building do that get big and then go back to original size animation is cool 😎.
Personally I could use some more direction, I quickly ran out of all options besides Deconstruct. Handholding or literally having arrows to what to purchase for new players for the first few turns could maybe help. I feel like your biggest challenge will be teaching people how to play your game. Take this with a grain of salt because I have not played a lot of games in this genre, am not good at them, and once again, am dum.
tldr; you have nice atmosphere, satisfying sound effects, and relaxing ambience. please teach me how to master your game and navigate the UI! 🏝️
Thanks for the feedback!
Multiplayer works when I tested it, so hopefully it works for everyone else as well.
I will make it more obvious that the castle placement locations are intractable.
I definitely think this game needs more tutorialization and plan to add either a dedicated tutorial or a set of contextual popup hints pointing things out to you on your first time. But I think is that its best to get things as intuitive and learnable as possible with good UI/UX/tooltips etc first then add in the heavy handed tutorial elements after. But I think now is the time to start on the more heavy handed teaching.