Excellent game! Really enjoyed what I’ve played so far, looking forward to seeing more of it. (I played the previous version yesterday, didn’t have time to comment until now)
I think this has a lot of promise and broad appeal, surprised it’s not at the top of the trending games for itch.
Suggestions on increasing visibility:
I browse the itch.io/games/new-and-popular page for new stuff, and I almost skipped over this because the game only has a title and logo image; without a description or picture of machines on a grid or something, I had no idea what the genre even was prior clicking the page by chance and running the game, and was pleasantly surprised. Things that would have helped it catch my eye there would have been a tagline (shows up under title) and description/maybe screenshots (shows up when hovering), and maybe a different image than the game's logo, that better conveys that this is a "machine placement" game? And I think you could reasonably add the "Deck Building" tag (popular tag, and it fits here).Gameplay feedback (on previous version):
You might have already addressed all of this, but here's my playtest thoughts/feedback if you find it useful:- Some effects feel like they could make-or-break a build but how they work is a bit unclear:
- I’m generally fine with how Heat works (it seems like processing more points generates more heat?), but since it’s a bit vague and unpredictable, that makes it hard to make value judgements for taking/selling heat-related relics and I just ignored them as a result (aside from “emergency vent”).
- Some effects add points at the “collector” machine step, but for scrap collectors that have an upper limit on points accepted it’s a bit spooky to take, the wording could be clearer about what step in the process points get added (and if it has a risk of invalidating the packet)
- Some machines have “side ports”, such as the sorter. But with two entrances and two exits, it’s not clear which exit is the “side” exit; is it always the right side, relative to the default rotation of the object? Or is it the “side”, relative to the side the packet entered from (so if a packet is fed in from the “left” (relative to default orientation), is the “top” treated as the “side” for those items?) I didn’t feel confident using this piece.
- The overflow collector is confusing. I think I get it, but if it determines things per-cycle then it seems like it’s using “sub-cycle timing/speed” to do determine which sides get higher multipliers, which feels like kind of a complex concept to manage (and also makes me less confident in using it).
- when I played, “machine parts you don’t currently have” had a massive appearance boost seemingly everywhere except from the “overkill” bonus rewards. So the ideal strategy for getting dupes of a needed piece is to seemingly to get one of EVERY item you can, and then unintuitively to sell that crucial piece, so it gets its rate boosted and you can reroll/buy packs to buy back multiple of it.
(these were all pretty small things, overall I had a very fun experience: started with assembly line kit, restarted after I better understood the game after making some mistakes and picked the scrap build instead, then transitioned that into a dice-heavy battery-to-multipliers-to-jackpot build that was reliably getting at minimum 9x the blind each time)