hey, thank you for playing - totally fair critique!
for context, this is a submission for a jam made in 2 weeks, and I agree there are plenty of things to improve, but sadly I can't change them in the next two weeks due to the jam rules
> Am I missing something
one thing that isn't clear in the game is how the liquid rate is calculated - it's log10(knowledge/penalty) - so the more knowledge you have, the faster you gain liquid. secrets also speed up liquid by 10% each, but they are meant to be the end of the game.
you could also manually increase amplifier right before a maze completion, even though the liquid rate is temporarily negative
either way, thank you and very valid feedback - I'll tweak the balance and descriptions as soon as I can, but it won't be for a bit
thanks for playing, and thank you for the feedback!
> wasn't very well balanced
I 100% agree
> only very poor options for increasing the rate of knowledge gain
Part 2 is both underpowered and poorly communicated. Liquid rate per second = `log10(knowledge / 100) * (1 + 0.1*secret)` - so my goal was having players balance gaining knowledge via amplifiers, then removing amps to gain more liquid knowledge to spend on upgrades. I wonder if knowing that would've made a difference to your playstyle and be less tedious.
> felt tacked on to extend the length > Would have been cool to see an expansion on the maze stuff
I really appreciate you saying this, and I really feel bad that the game made you feel this in the first place as that wasn't my intention.
Originally I wanted a multi-layer game, where a basic maze was the 1st layer and secrets were the 2nd (and a potential third). Then I got this 3D maze idea, which felt like something unique worth making - and I ended up spending way too much time on it, which led to two consequences: 1) I lost complete sense of how fun or not fun the maze is, and 2) there was not much time for other layers.
I started to question whether the maze is fun on it's own, especially as you get automation - there is not much to do. It is an Upgrade puzzle, but it's not that complicated of a puzzle. But then making a 2nd layer that completely moves on from the maze felt silly, wasteful, and disconnected. So I decided to pivot - make a 2nd layer that interacts with the first layer. The goal of the amplifier was to add a new resource that you balance with the maze output, while still upgrading the maze. It felt like a good compromise since you still engage with the maze yet dealing with a "harder" puzzle (expect the bad pacing of upgrades and perhaps some underpowered upgrades)
But clearly, I failed. This is the 2nd feedback I'm getting that Maze is actually fun despite my believes and that the 2nd part feels not as engaging. I do wonder if you still would have felt this way if the pacing was a bit more balanced.
once you get scissors upgrade, the strategy is to click on paper, rather than just random - but you are right that's still just a clicking game. I had a few other ideas to both spice up the strategies and make it more idle, but the time was the ultimate limit :)
