itch.io

perhaps it would be easier to reword the log itself? something to the effect of "Being able to see the size of the explosion, it seems I will be safe as long as I'm not past the dam" This takes it from "I survived it here" to "I witnessed it". you could even add a flag for if astrape was reached to instead add a "past the dam or at astrape" at the end

edit: flag not being for if you were at astrape when it happened, just a flag purely for if the character would even know where astrape is to begin with

i was actually just thinking about this recently after reading palandus's response... while royalty free images would be perfectly fine, there is a lot to be said about the theatre of the mind...  if that is what is kept, then the focus should be more with the intent of this being essentially an interactive book, meaning all focus is on the writing and I would say the UI needs to be made better with more options for font size and maybe a small handful of color options to make sure no one has trouble reading stuff... which I know from the roadmap UI is already a work in progress so... will just have to wait and see about that

As someone who has played many incremental games, and games that make use of a time loop... and having beaten the current content... I actually find the balance pretty much perfect: the game doesn't reward you for just bruteforcing loops to get what you want, you need to actually think out your steps a bit to maximize the rewards you get at the start, and that kind of thinking helps you throughout the rest of the game, then you start getting the loop mechanics, and it really does make everything easier pretty quickly.  That being said: you have a lot more room for error then you think... I ended up losing all progress due to a browser reset and, properly maxing out all food and drink, you can get the first objective with a little over 2 minutes to spare.

If I could strongly, strongly encourage one thing for 1.0 or shortly after, especially if you are planning to market it: add pictures. they don't need to be interactive at all, (I would even suggest against making them interactive) they don't even need to be highly detailed, but even a simple background for each location, and a small picture for each action would go a long way towards widening your target audience. just something to consider.

same. once finished, as is, easily worth 5 dollars. easily. better UI, fix up some of the bugs, some QOL things, definitely worth 10.

Art style still really looks neat, though given the type of game this is, I'm actually a little concerned the talking system seems to still be having a bit of bugs with it... when I tried to follow the directions I ended up with a weird bug where it was like a conversation was trying to be there, but wasn't, and wouldn't let me do anything? but once I restarted it didn't happen... very weird.

That being said, it's really nice to see the watch being animated now. Now it just needs more interaction with the clues and journal.

the environment looks nice and the inventory system is there... but I'm still confused on how you can enter the dungeon? everytime I try to go in I just spawn out of the dungeon and free fall into the void and die... definitely needs fixed.

As for the inventory, maybe unless it's not fully functional yet, I'm a little confused how you interact with it? I was able to pick up the items but wasn't able to put anything in... if it works it might need better directions on how to use it.

the models are all looking really nice and coming in great... though the spotlight on Chem feels... a little harsh. would definitely suggest turning it up a bit but widening the area to make it "spread out" a little softer... unless you are going for a spotlight, in that case it needs to the end of the circle more abruptly.

The walking animation looks... off. like, moving feels like it goes slightly off center to begin with, but then with the person always looking at the mouse while moving backwards is weird... perhaps the person should always turn in the direction they are moving instead?

I can tell all the core things are in, now it's just making the rest of it that supports the core gameplay... the enemies and bullets ignore walls. clearing a room spawned a white cube in a middle section that was out of reach. The shop window can't be closed. If I could offer one bit though... there should be more impact for when enemies are spawning in to show where they are coming in at, when they hit and are hit, and when defeated. Generally you either want dangerous enemies that are difficult for each one to be defeated, like a boss rush, or a bunch of small enemies that are only dangerous as a group... right now it's kind of neither, with them coming in one at a time. A good example might be the praire king minigame in stardew valley... each enemy is easy to kill, but the challenge is in how many spawn.

The last thing I want to point out, is I like the idea of the shooting being musical notes... but it needs work. right now it just plays a random note everytime it's fired, which sounds nice... as long as you don't spam the fire, which given the type of game you would want to... and very quickly shows the limited number of notes it plays. Something you could look into, is have a soundtrack of some kind "playing" in the background, and then each time it fires it simply "turns on" one note in that song. That being said, if not that, a stricter limit on how fast you can fire would help at least keep it from being as noticeable.

I think I see where you are trying to go with this... you dungeon crawl to get stuff, then operate a business off of the items you get... I can see some of the core stuff is in place, but it is a little worrying with the sheer amount of models that are missing faces. I'm not sure if they are flipped incorrectly, or missing altogether, but one example is the log cabin, the middle of the logs you would see when you look at the side of the entryway is just missing, same with a giant rock type thing? i also found what I think is supposed to be the entrance to the dungeon but when it teleported me, there was no floor and I just died... which while I'm glad to see you have a death plane, once the player dies all controls stop working, including the ability to open the menu to quit the game. I imagine you may want to look into having some of the more basic controls, like opening the main menu, not tied to the player character and more global? keep working at it!

Very neat graphics style! I can definitely see where it is going and it works really well. A couple bugs that will definitely want to be addressed: 1; if you are in middle of talking to someone when the first "hour" is up, it puts it back into walking mode, without clearing the text, making it impossible to interact with anything anymore. Also, if the player is turning while the player input is limited due to the "announcements" it keeps turning until the announcement is over. Also, everyone disappears after the first hour moment, not sure if that was intentional? Also, the cop placement makes it very hard to get to the door behind him... can't wait to see what you do next with it!