First, thank you for making this alpha available for download and evaluation.
I'd like to share my thoughts on my experience with Alpha v6.
Overall, I find this to be a very enjoyable game. I like how things unfold from one small island to a larger and larger map. Items/skills unfold at a good pace and makes the anticipation of the next thing drive the player to continue on. I also like that you must discover much on your own without a wiki/manual or overt training. There are some things I would like to have known ahead of time (like, once you place a structure you are stuck with its location), but overall it has been positive. The music suits the game play. I hope there is more variety of music in the final product.
At this point in the game I am more than 10 hours in and at level 38. I am now forced to select experience items that are yet to be implemented. I was surprised I was able to select the power-up/item that is not yet implemented, but I hope that means I will have that ability/perk when it is added (assuming it is added) to the alpha. I believe my land mass is something like a 4x3 grid. I guess that means I may have purchased 11 plots of land? At this point, things are pricey and it takes quite a while to secure the funds for the next plot of land. I have a lot of furnaces and forges going at the same time and I have all the perks that increase your chance of getting gems, extra items, etc. All of my forged items are auto-delivered. Needless to say, I have a lot of items coming at me all the time. I also have a good number of fish traps and many, many berry bushes. I have about 1000 berries in my inventory with about 250 fish. I say this only to show I have no really worries when it comes to food.
I think I've reached a point of monotony in the game as it is. My process revolves around the same things: 1) Walk the land to harvest, gold, ores, wood, food. 2) Continuously sell gems and extraneous items (seaweed, bottles, etc.) to gain money and experience. 3) Harvest all my fish traps and process their contents when they are all full. 3) Harvest all my berries from the bushes when they are full. 4) Level up. 5) Repeat.
The way the game is structured, I am pretty much in a rhythm and worry that I can't really handle much more in the way of tasks. Following the above pattern allows me to continue to level up and maintain enough energy without falling behind. If I had much more to worry about I feel like things would begin to spin out of control and something would have to give. If I had animals to care for or crops that needed to be harvested at a specific time, I'd be out of luck. So, at this point I think I am going to call it quits for this version as I don't think I have much to look forward to until there is an update.
Some things I would like to see:
1) I need a more obvious warning that my energy/hunger is an issue. It is very hard to focus on the current warning with all the noises and flashing items in the game.
2) I would like the ability to move/delete created structures. If there is a way to do this already, I've not discovered it. With any building game, once you have more breathing room it is nice to relocate structures to make things more efficient.
3) I would like to be able to throw a specific number of items into a forge/furnace. The all/half option is nice, but sometimes I want to throw three things in there. Again, if this option already exists, it isn't evident to me.
4) Storage - I don't think anyone would carry around their bricks, steel ingots, ores, etc. I don't mind having a limited inventory to force me into certain decisions, but carrying around raw materials when you are in an advanced state in the game is troublesome.
5) Performance tweak - I have a quad-core i7 CPU, an Nvida 1080 GPU and 16GB RAM. At points when there are lots of items on the screen, the game play slows down so much that it is frustrating. When my furnaces/forges all finish working, things pick up a bit. When I add various items to my inventory (say, there are lots of pieces of wood or gold laying around) that will speed things up a bit. At this point in the game there is a lot going on (especially with forging and the furnaces). It really drags the performance down to the point that I just don't want to play it due to the sluggishness.
6) Multiplayer - I don't really like multiplayer games, but I do like having the option. In a game like this where you have a lot of tasks to perform, it seems like a no-brainier to be able to "share the load", as it were. I finished "Stardew Valley" a couple weeks ago, just prior to the multiplayer upgrade. I could see how adding multiplayer to a game with some similar mechanics would be very helpful.
7) Chests - Would like to have seen more chests as I purchased land/solved puzzles. I think I only saw three of them in more than ten hours.
In general, I've had a great time with this alpha and look forward to your progress. I only had a couple of crashes and they didn't result in a catastrophe. You've done a wonderful job with the game. I hope you find great success with it.