Hi,
I'm prototyping a new idea. It's like minesweeper but you need to "find the bombs". It's a web game, not to long but most of what I had in mind is there. I'll be in the process of adding more content.
I'm looking for fresh eyes. When working on the same project, I tend to get familiar with the "obvious" problems and don't see them.
https://fluffy-lotus.itch.io/space-order-mine
Thanks!
Interesting, seems kinda like a reverse minesweeper, seeing as you want to click on the proverbial mines. Gameplay seems fine, part of me has an itch for traditional uniform minesweeper square grids, but the asteroid mix works. Hm, actually thinking about it there's no point in collecting multiples of the same weapon because you can only funnel energy into one weapon at a time. Maybe consider a central reactor/battery to put the collected energy, and then have a power management system for where to funnel it so players can fire multiple weapons or use multiple items like shields/healing, maybe being distributed per finished puzzle/round/tick or some such. So if you need to on a given battle divert more collected energy to, say, shields if needed. Healing/repairing also seems kinda on the low side, the heal device only seems to need 1 energy despite saying it needs 2, and it only heals for 1. Maybe consider upping the cost/benefit and balancing it a bit.
I like the term "reverse minesweeper".
As for the battery concept.... why did you gave me this idea ! :) Now I keep thinking about it and don't know which concept would be more fun. I think I'll create both concept and get feedback on both.
- The E automatically goes in the battery and player click on the weapon.
- Player click on the E and it fills up the selected weapon.
Maybe you had the item that gives +1 to energy. But I'll definitely have to up the healing. In the past, the enemy were hitting for 1 damage.
Great feedback, thanks a lot!
Hm, now that you mention it I hadn't realized you could leave the energy on the board and select between weapons before picking it up. I think the battery approach might prove a bit more intuitive though, but we'll have to see. Something else to consider if you like, instead of clicking the weapon to draw power from the battery, consider setting it up like an action queue system. What I mean by this is, you can select/toggle multiple weapons "on" at a time, and then press the battery button to send the energy to all of them at once. This way you can use multiple weapons simultaneously in a given action.
Np, seems like a fun little prototype. Be interesting to see what its like if you ever decide to flesh it out, seems like a lot of little details could be put in, like a more CR-8 style inventory for ship systems, hull/power/shields/weapons/etc.
Just gave your new update a spin, see a bit of the inventory expansion bit. Drill feels... a little strong. Also encountered a bug with it, when clearing a board and there's only one rock left, if you drill click on it, you won't have any other rocks to drill through, and thus get permanently stuck. If you decide to keep it, maybe make it so you can double tap the same rock to drill through it,
Also, to expand on the CR-8 reference with its various battery/splitter/amplifier components. For example, you have two weapons currently,one needs 1 power, the other two. But lets say your battery can output only 1 power at a time, then you'd need two batteries connected to your bigger gun to get it to work, or an amplifier which can double the power output of a battery. But what if you supply too much power to a 1 power weapon or system? Then it could damage your ship with an overload when used, heh.
That's funny, I did the exact fix yesterday (it's not live). The double tap is also useful because I'm adding different type of cell in the mining area. For now, there's lava cell that hurts for 1 (I didn't put energy under them) and ice cells that needs to be hit twice to open it. I was thinking, some enemies could alter the mining area (ex: add ice on cells).
I don't know what to do yet when the battery overflow, it could hurt the player. I'll have to add negative status effect on items. I'm also a bit limited since in "battle mode" we only see the weapons. There isn't enough space on screen for user to, for example, select different drills. Or see all the different batteries and their different effects.
If I understand the idea, batteries could output 1 energy on weapons but they would also need to touch the weapon in the inventory system. That's an interesting idea. I'll write it down. I want to build effect between items but I'm not there yet in my list.
Alter the mining area... That actually seems like a really neat idea, there are all kinds of effects you could use. I have the urge to say "and they could plant mines!", but given the play style that could get confusing, heh. Well, unless maybe the mines had a red beacon on them and forced the player to drill 4 tiles around them first to disarm them or take damage or something. Oh, or to disarm them before they explode and damage the player.
Battery overflow damage seems like an ok idea,but would probably only come into play with the power amplifiers that double energy gained. If weapons like the larger cannon need 2 energy and the battery can output only one, or you have uneven total power then that can also make things interesting. Not being able to see your inventory on screen is also an interesting issue, I imagine it like setting up a circuit board before each match and then playing with the results. In backpack hero though, you can choose to move items around in your inventory at the cost of your turn, or each inventory action could be seen as a tick/mining block for the enemies. So, you could potentially swap out the mining area for the inventory temporarily if the player chooses to in a given round to make adjustments if they want. But the general play would encourage setup beforehand.
The items effects are an interesting aspect which encourages the need for management, there are all kinds of interactions CR-8 has between their items, use of empty space or full space, rows of items, alignment, various reactors even, etc. Makes for quasi circuit design, heh.
Boop, just tried the latest build, lots of fun stuff here. :D
Greatly increased map, bit finer balance, and the new mining maps too. An interesting choice of weapon drawbacks with the lava/ice cannons, makes the ice/lava clear items more synergistic. Did find an issue though, if you have greater than 4 weapons equipped, you can only use 4 as the side menu can't scroll up/down. Might be useful to either have a way to choose and equip which items are in the sidebar, or find a way to fit them in and/or scroll it.
I confess, i'm starting to have a hard time deciding which parts to take and which to leave behind, selections getting pretty good. It looks like the shield chips don't seem to be working though, the ones that give +1 to adjacent items. Also, really wanna try the energy drain and, uh, fusion drill? Sadly, only places i've seen them drop so far is from the last boss. T_T
edit: Actually, I just got hold of the energy drain weapon, seems to need some tweaking. Shooting it before the enemies first fire doesn't seem to have an effect, and shooting it when enemies are charging in some cases doesn't stop them firing as if they hadn't lost energy.
"i'm starting to have a hard time deciding which parts to take and which to leave behind" I like that :)
You are right, the shield chips doesn't work to well. I'll also take a look at the energy drain weapon. I'll make sure to fix it in the next version.
There's a mini boss that also gives a higher change of rare items. I want to change the map UI to make it a bit more obvious what each planet are doing so we can plan our path a bit more.
I'm currently working on all the tooltips, they aren't working to well and I think they are important.
Boop. Interesting adjustments to the overworld, did a few runs and the energy drain's working nice, same with shield chips and basic shield. Encountered a few other bugs though:
-If you have >10 shields, and you activate your basic shield, it resets the shields back down to 10 (intended or not?).
-Shield chips have no effect on Shield Drones, despite them apparently being compatible.
-If you go to the options menu (nice btw), and hit quit, it doesn't actually quit. If you press play again, it takes you right back where you left off and doesn't reset the game state.
-If you go to the options menu and press continue, the mouse click carries through as an action in the play area (IE: clicking continue and it simultaneously mines a rock under your mouse position as a result).
Minor typo on the shop keeper, "to" instead of "ot", otherwise so far so good. Curious though, is the shop a straight drop of an item? Or should be carry a trade off of swapping a particular item or having X energy available to "spend" as it were? Another thing to consider, while its interesting to see whats up ahead on the galactic map for planning, should that extend to the entire map, or just the adjacent 1-2 nodes ahead of you?
Thanks for that!
Right now, it's just a straight item. I don't plan on having any other currency at the moment. The "random event" code is there, I plan on making them a bit more interesting.
As for the map, it's not obvious but if you hover the mouse on the right or left most side of the map, it will move the map and let the player see what's up ahead.
Ah yes, I did figure out the panning feature. What I meant was should the icons of each planet, shop, random event, battle, etc. be visible on the whole map for each planet? Or should it only show what each planet holds adjacent to your position, such as the 1-2 planet choices in front of you at the moment to add a bit of mystery to your decisions down the line? Just an idle thought.
