Post by patrickdavison in Precious Metal jam comments

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This game has a lot of charming touches in its opening moments. Starting with a big "in debt" tracker is hilarious. And going around your ship, opening lockers, and using your navigation computer is great fun. I do think there are some real balance issues -- my second play through I had a sword and armor that seemed to make me invincible to anything encountered on the first 2 planets -- I reached level 4 without really thinking about it.

The biggest issue for me is that the maps I played through felt both large and empty. I didn't ever discover any objects in the world besides doors and enemies. At the very least, it would be neat if you had to track down items to "unlock" future locations from your nav. computer, rather them simply add on automatically.

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thp5 years ago

I'm glad you like it! I pretty much agree with all your criticisms, but on balance I am pretty happy with how it turned out.

My original plan for the game involved lots more work on map generation, I've got several different planned map types in my notes. And I wanted the discovery of new areas to work something like what you describe, hunting for clues that would point you towards the next level(s). But I spent so much time ironing bugs out of the sprawling map system and ship movement code that I just didn't have the time to implement any additional kinds of area or even flesh out that basic "space station" type any further with details like furniture and so on.

The same time sink meant that a lot of the numerical balance of the game never got done, so you're right that it can be pretty swingy based on what ship you get and whether your lockers randomly have good stuff in them. I tried to mitigate that a little bit by having the different ships guarantee certain items and randomize others, so there's some consistency in the initial loadout but you might get lucky and get a cool thing.

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patrickdavison5 years ago

That makes sense -- scope is always a real killer during jams. Would you consider adding some type of "fuel" resource to your planet locations? that could be a nice analogue to a "hunger clock" you NEED to stay at each planet long enough to find enough fuel to leave...or you could push your luck to keep looking for valuables...if you're going to keep plugging away at this version, that is. Cheers!

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thp5 years ago

I'm definitely still plugging away at the game, since it turned out unexpectedly fun and I feel like it still has a lot of potential as a game with just a little more stuff added. I was thinking you'd search the alien computers for references to other places to raid, but I also kind of like your fuel idea-- I already kind of have fuel represented in the game, since you may have noticed that your debt jumps up a couple hundred bucks every time you fly to a new location, so it wouldn't be out of the way to add an explicit fuel collection minigame.

I'll probably release updates separately from this version, though-- I prefer to keep the 7DRL version as-is, aside from fixes for actual game-breaking bugs that crop up (like the crash bug I fixed already, or the one that made it impossible to win because I flipped a greater-than sign). As for the updated version, I'll probably want to publish it through my own site, anyway, for functionality's sake-- the current version attempts to post your scores to my scoreboard server, for example, but running within itch.io's ssl page means that the browser sees the submission as an XSS attack and prohibits it. (There went an hour or two of the jam spent writing the scoreboard server, too.) When I do release a version with new content and balance fixes and the like, I'll make sure to put a link to it on the main game page.

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