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(+1)

Firstly, I really respect the choice of subject matter which you managed to balance out with the 'I'm not taking myself too seriously' style writing, which made the topic laughable. Hats off to you for not shying away from it.  

You've managed to put together a bunch of systems for a strategy game in a WEEK, ALONE.  To me, that's crazy. Ultimately that led to the tutorial dump at the start. Other comments have already mentioned this, the tutorial was very crucial and helpful in game playability, but it could have been done better by pacing it out (which you also mentioned in a reply yourself). I found myself clicking around a little trying to rmb what's what and where everything was. Understandably though you only had a day to put it all in, and with a game like this there is bound to be a shit tonne of information. I also appreciate that you tried to iconise most things on the top bar so that it wouldn't be a words-galore situation, but perhaps some icons could have used some tweaking for player understandability (or perhaps the slower paced tutorial would have already helped with that).

I'm not sure how I feel about a strategy game where you can eventually just sit back and watch the centrifuges go (or in my case had no choice but to, since my money got stuck at 50k from stupid spending), but perhaps for a gamejam that IS better. I am also completely unable to comment on any of the balance for a strategy game cos I don't know shit about that, so I won't :) 

The choice of bg music is nice, it doesn't pull too much attention to itself, fades out for a bit which gives the player respite, but still adds to the atmosphere, I really liked that (I still have it playing while I type this lol). Visually, it's no spectacle, but it did the job and carried the message, so all things considered it doesn't take away from the game.

(I just read the tip about economy before centrifuges. Damn.)

All in all, good job, I appreciate that this exists.

(2 edits)

Thank you for taking the time to play and share your excellent and overly generous feedback. I'm really pleased to hear that at least the thematic elements of the game have landed without offence, which is kind of a miracle.

 I think you've really hit on the crux of the problem with the whole tutorial and systems design; there probably needs to be more of it for the player to get a complete understanding, but no player actually wants more of it. I certainly left myself stuck between a rock and a hard place, and there's some real learnings here for future games that have more than one mechanic!

No the balance is absolute dogshit and you're most welcome to call it out. In general it is a nightmare to balance systems when they start to interact with one another, but that shouldn't be an excuse, because I made the decision to add that complexity. It does lead to a situation where you either get thrashed from the start, or roll over everything. But it always leads to some waiting around for the end which is never good.

I'm quite pleased that you didn't find my programmer art offensive to look at! I am no artisté, and usually stick to 3D games as that's where I'm most comfy, but I thought I'd screw around with some pixel art this time and here we are. I certainly wont be making a career change to drawing any time soon.

Thank you again for taking the time to play and collate your thoughts, you're much too kind in your feedback and it is appreciated. There's lots of food for thought.