itch.io

I second this. It's really hard to switch between the benchmarks and figure out what each benchmark provides (funding, telemetry) as there just isn't enough reward information provided, or even to swap between them because the tiny dropdown can't fit enough of the different options. It would feel much easier to select a benchmark in the tab and then click a button to "set as active benchmark" in the main tab.

I also didn't really feel a good sense of progression or what was coming next; it felt more like a proof of concept with random unlocks than actual gameplay. Apart from the benchmark rewards above, it feels like the unlocked research, components and prestige unlocks were very jumbled. Each loop didn't really feel that different to the last and I never felt like what I knew what I wanted to do next and nothing really felt natural. It felt like I was just testing the same designs slotting them in and out and I had no idea why I would keep doing that before progressing to the "current generation" chip.

Anyway -- I think the progression has to be really reworked a lot before the gameplay layers start to make sense. In a general sense, it feels like you should start off with a basic chip design each generation, and then you progress to making more and more advanced chips as the game progresses, until you reset. At the moment the player can kind of dump in whatever components you like as soon as the refresh completes and then apart from the research (which is not very visible of interactive), each refresh kind of feels a bit pointless. Or you try and dump everything in but then you need to run the basic benchmarks (with a low TDP) to restart the run and get the basic currency. So I'd like to propose that the player should be resetting component design each prestige; not the arbitrary research buffs. That type of reset would give a lot more meaning to the components, both as something interactive and as obvious milestones along the run to unlock, rather than upgrades hidden on the different shop tab.

I have actually thought for two literal hours of ways to improve the game because the concept of a microchip designer is such a fascinating topic: from restructuring the benchmarks into branches and forcing the player to pick a branch and make more frequent "chip prestiges" to swap between mobile/desktop designs; gameplay constraints like a limit on silicon wafers changing the amount of parts available per run, or restricting the grid size; changing the genre to a puzzle with roguelike-style random component offerings/unlocks per run; maybe even retheming to the business side with an idea of running an "efficient foundry" and introducing component costs to give a management flavour. There's a lot of potential and fun ideas connected to working at the chip companies, honestly the time flew by. But as the game currently is, it's just a cool way to try tinkering and making chips and making the number go (randomly) up. Sadly the gameplay loop and currencies/prestiges just don't really connect to the idle genre or anything with deeper meaning yet.