Thank you so much for your in depth reviewing!
I have added a guide with F1 that explains far more in depth on different features, mechanics and functions!
I'm glad to see you figured some of them out on your own!
If you ever see anything else or have any other questions, comments or concerns please let me know!
-Maz
thank you. having read through now and played some with the new info, i have some notes for feedback.
1. having the soil tier system so limited to the player's clicking is really a bummer, especially expanding into more desolate types. as is, it is unbearably slow to even get lush soil with a fully established grove on top of it with full oak trees, and having to manually clear new ground and then work it to higher tiers is just exhausting and really a turn off for a game about establishing an ecosystem like this, at some point it should be able to handle itself and grow or even surpass our capabilities once we get it set up.
2. plant culling is currently very clunky for lack of a better word. having no options to ever get it other than clearing swaths of growth is a bummer but can be worked around, but the evolution system is what throws me off mostly. the main use of the specialized plants seem to either be to survive disasters, survive inhospitable land until it can become more lush, or refill nutrients to the land, both of which are not really done. for example, a heat resistant grass or small plant does nothing to protect the more valuable plants on the tile that cant be specialized in such a way, or even past themselves, and that also means you have to basically kill and regrow everything each disaster or evolve everything which is just not a good solution.
3. just a bug, automatic clicking does not seem to include the area of affect upgrade so it's practically useless.
now, for recommendations, feel free to pick or ignore any of this, it is your project after all and i am merely saying what i would personally enjoy more in a game like this so no offence intended at all. i would have specialized plants have more of an effect on their environment and tile, such as deep rooted ones that get their own trickle of resources also fuel the soil partly, or have more resistant plants act as insulators, which could go with larger groups as well as forests are known to both keep in heat when cold and act as cooler areas when it is hot, in general if you work that much, including culling your own growths for them, then they should be more than just a stop gap until other life can fill it. also, i would largely divest soil improvement from clicking entirely, our domain should be lifer and setting up an ecosystem and not past that, if anything lock it behind will like other big powers to change the environment, this also goes for the cloud tools such as deeper rooted plants pulling up water to create small ponds or pond tiles to then make more clouds and underwater plants, allowing life to do that heavy lifting such as the dune plant specifically working to revitalize sand or sandy soil or a tap root bush to bring up groundwater to create ponds and onward as examples of a purposeful terraformer plants to infuse vitality and change the composition of the environment. give animals more variety and a larger role in advancement in general like burrows that help surrounding soil nutrients or other symbiotic behaviors other than just dying for a small boost such as helping in the spreading of seeds and thus terraforming. insects are largely ok as is, even if the nerf to their biomass and thus upgrades cripples a lit of the middle game speedy progress, all i would want is more variety in use if anything. finally, i would expand the 'story' progression as it were, such as what the Everwood actually is, and more selfhood and characterization from our character as it, perhaps the original root of life that started it all here on earth either naturally or from the stars, and what caused the current barren state of the world such as a world war and where humans are now be it extinct or my favorite as out among the stars which would open up later interaction and missions, kinda like the game terraforming titans also on itch, and more structure to the map progressions such as moving to desert once you have the starting meadow level done, like a proper campaign with stages whether it ends with earth or beyond as life wished to reach. if you want to keep the personal map part for prestige currency then i would make them optional to the side to help the main game or even acting as a background boost as the world is revitalized.
All in all, great work and very promising, i would just like to see more identity to the story, reliance on setting up an evolving ecosystem than brute forcing everything, and just more depth and progression as a whole. I'm happy to play it and have any role in supporting it or giving feedback for improvement.
Alaric120,
Thank you so much for your feedback and I'd love to give a good reply to some of your feedback so you know what's going on.
1.) It's not limited to the players clicking, and it does move towards change on it's own without player input. In my play tests it seems to do so every time. My questions would be: Are you upgrading your plants enough? Your soil? Without those upgrades, the game will not do much, the environment resists change unless pressed. As for manually clearing ground, if you've been upgrading your pulse, wider reach, focused flow, auto click and tilling grasp, you can literally terraform from Salted and Scorched to Lush soil in about 16 seconds (I counted ;-) )
2.) Yes, plant culling is clunky. I 100% agree. I just wanted to get it into the game to begin that process. This game is in heavy alpha, I recognize that and the work to polish these features is coming! To be honest, the idea of forced evolution is sacrifice. In it's current state, nothing is that expensive. Clearing a bunch of mature grass can easily get you an evolution, which was never the intention. The intention was to make hard decisions on what to cull to get enough spirit. At this juncture, it can be done with grass, the intention has always been to sacrifice higher tier plants in order to acquire evolutions. The choice between evolving for survival or manually pouring vitality into the forest are real choices a player can make with the same result; the survival of the forest.
3.) Automatic clicking works with area of effect on my end. I'm running the same version. So I'm curious, in the Clicking/Everwood's Touch upgrade section, do you have the Pulse Focus: radius 0 or 4? I purposefully made it so you can adjust your AOE up or down. If you go down, it consolidates all of the power from a AOE into a smaller and smaller area, making it far easier to get magical soil. This could be a real bug and I totally believe you if it is. I just can't reproduce it. I have 3 separate profiles to make sure they I can test different things from different stages in progress and every time I get auto click and wider reach they work. So now, I'm curious.
4.) The plan for specialized plants is just that, each to have their own unique abilities and stats. I'm just not that far yet. Implementation and graphics will likely come first before I try to balance out dozens of plants, abilities, weaknesses and strengths.
5.) Plants currently insulate insects based on how much cover is on the soil square. Other insulation abilities have not been implemented yet to protect other plants.
6.) I'm not sure what you mean by "divesting" soil improvement from clicks? Why would I do that? (Honest question). It's one way to, as you say, brute force it through. This is a clicker game as much as idle.
7.) Water tiles are in future updates, the intention (hopefully possible) to allow the player, through will or ecology, to build ponds, streams and rivers complete with water plants.
8.) More animals are coming, just needed some to start to get the code in place and test different options. Planning on deer, wolves, bear, elk, etc. Probably more.
9.) Animals already help spread seeds, if they eat a plant, when they poop, it has 100% germination chance on that soil they poop one. They are one of the few ways the world spreads with no effort. Birds can also drop random seeds of any tier with varying chances, more birds will be coming, right now there's a chance for 1 to come every hour of the daytime.
10.) Insects left to their own devices when they came into being could terraform about 700 soil squares on their own in 6 in game days, complete with a full meadow. V1 insects were FAR too powerful, V2 were not far behind. I needed to reign them in, far more balancing will be to come.
11.) More lore is coming, I just got the basis of the Lore set so players testing would have an idea of what my intention is, as getting through all of this is a bit of a slow process :-)
12.) The future and final version of the game will have a "World map" showing the barren levels with their respective terrain (Desert, Tundra, etc.), and if you have a forest or meadow on that section, a "mini map" so to speak will show the forest in that zone. The campaign in it's current condition is a stop gap to test, polish and see what works and what doesn't.
I hope some of my responses are enlightening and helpful! Feel free to give me more feedback at any time and respond to some of the things I brought up for you! I'm always up to discuss all of it!
-Maz
just reloaded the game again and started a new campaign and the auto click started working with area of effect so i don't know what it was before, but it's fixed now.
as for the brute force clicking to improve soil, i apologize if i didn't express myself well enough. To me, there is just a feeling of disconnect between a few of the game features and systems when playing for a while, like it's trying to be two games at once. putting so much effort into establishing an ecosystem is great and i love a lot of the base system there. i am also aware that soil improves over time but it has been extremely slow even with everything up to oak trees and flourishing animals around, taking over an hour for lush soil to get to get any notable progress in my experience, to the point that it isn't really an option or even mentionable next to just spamming clicks for 20 minutes, and cannot spread said healing effectively. My point is, the disconnect I'm feeling is between the fact we spend so much effort growing, evolving, and specializing tiers of plants only to get upgrades for our clicking and their own survival, not to actually make progress on the whole map if that makes sense. i understand this is partly a clicker game, but even cookie clicker had automation options, though that isn't the best example. Even if i do push my vitality click and transform the whole map, it just doesn't feel satisfying or a coherent part of the progress loop given the premise of regrowing a devastated world, especially on larger maps or harder ones.
My suggestion to separate soil upgrades from clicking was my thoughts on a way to fix this, by making the player rely on the life they establish themselves instead of brute force it gives a more central feeling to curating, specializing, and upgrading plant tiers to create a functioning whole ecosystem as it would be the needed way to progress and vitalize the map instead of what follows behind it in a way. Same goes for my suggesting the same with the cloud tools, needing to have the proper hardy plants to start the process on barren tiles, and then carrying over such evolved plants over to more challenging maps like the dune grass and the desert to start out, instead of just upgrading the tile and making it rain would feel more satisfying and add more of a real challenge to the game other than grinding, while locking it behind the Will power system allows you to get the same use but rewarding the base premise of building up life and revitalizing the world and prestige upgrades.
my point with the animals was also pretty unclear looking back, as i am aware they spread seeds, i just meant having some more unique behavior like burrows or nests and species specific effects that can help with the curating of the larger system if you create a place said individual species thrives, but i understand this is still in development and i don't mean to say this is needed now, just an idea.
I hope i communicated by main issue more clearly here. Keep up the good work!
