itch.io

This is fantastic, 15/10, and I'm almost definitely never going to finish it.

Once you understand the core loop of "use thing -> get new thing -> use new thing", it's "just" a puzzle about optimizing your use of space on the timeline. "Just" is in scare quotes because it's still a fantastic exploration of the concept, but here's the thing: it's trivial to think about, and incredibly tedious to actually do. That's an unhappy combination. I could math everything out on paper in maybe ten or fifteen minutes, but then to implement that it would probably take hours, which would include a lot of very tedious trial-and-error with how far I can stretch certain lines.

If this is the point, then yeehaw, you nailed it. If you don't want players having this response, then the game needs:

• a quicker, user-friendlier "undo" function, for when you know something is out of place but fixing it would require keeping incredible amounts of "state" in your head about what you want to rebuild once you fix the positioning; or,
• some way of defining and encapsulating "units" that are bigger than a single node (e.g. other commenters mention field-house-tree-house-field), so there's less state to keep in your head in the first place.

And this may just be a personal thing, but: I think it's a huge bummer that using robots to produce a thing isn't any more efficient than using humans. That's the whole point of automation. If that's not part of the experience you want to deliver in exploring the game's concept (which, again, 15/10 job in marrying concept to play experience) then alright, I guess, but I think it follows naturally from talking about Adam Smith.

Started on my phone browser (Firefox for Android if that matters), exported save, tried to load it on desktop (also Firefox), it says "Import successful", but then nothing changes (even on a hard reload of the page). Kind of a bummer.

Either I'm exactly the kind of nerd this game is meant for, or it's amazing, or more likely both. 

My only complaint: I can't get research to work. I made sure to hire a scientist, but when I hit the research button on the left console nothing happens.  LMAO, oh. You have to scroll into the top of the menu with the arrows. The rest of the interface is "not immediately intuitive but you can figure it out if you've done this sort of thing before". This part is pretty far below that level of intuitiveness. 

(The last comment on this is 4 years old so I realize I probably won't get a response, but this game's so good it was worth a shot.) 

Fantastic game, very fun mechanics and I also really like the aesthetic.

One thing I wish it had was a way to see factory and turret coverage - I'm the kind of nerd who wants to keep the whole base roughly equally protected and the distance between turret and ammo factory uniform and low, and I feel like this sort of game appeals to this kind of nerd, so I doubt I'm the only one.

You can already see the range of a turret you're building, so a hotkey to show the ranges of the turrets of the same type seems easy to add. Factory coverage is more abstract, but a similar hotkey to highlight the factories of the current type would already be a big improvement.

This is incredibly cool, and my only point of contention is:

ESDF and not WASD??? 

I'm assuming that that's due to some limitation of PICO-8 and not because you're a particularly depraved individual, but it rustles my jimmies all the same 😨

Fun game, very good and creepy vibes, but I lost on either a technicality or a bug. 

I had 91 points, he had 96, I played a 6 with "capture the opponent's card if you lose", he played a 9 (which I knew he would as I had divined it previously). I lost the round, so I should have captured the 9 for a total of 100. Instead I lost. If that's intentional, it feels bad, and if it's not, then there's something wrong with the order in which effects are checked.

The devil went down to Georgia, and challenged Johnny to a fiddling contest, and Johnny was like "nah, I have thirty thousand chickens." 🤣

That's also inspired by Slay (more of a re-implementation of it, really) or I'm the queen of England.

Extremely dwarfy, love it. What's there can obvs benefit from some QoL improvements:

• Maybe automation doesn't fit the vibe, but my clicking finger would appreciate some way to set up production chains. 
• More consistency in where outputs land.
• More stack options: "drop single token from held stack", "take whole stack minus one", "split stack", "increase/decrease grab size", "interleave two stacks" (ie. 4 carrot and 4 cucumber become an 8-tall stack of carrot-cucumber-carrot-etc, which I can then take 2 at a time to give to the kitchen dwarf)
• Some way to condense tokens, increase the play area, or both.
• Recipe management. At the very least I should be able to mouse over a completed task to see the recipe for it. Couldn't hurt to make the sage more interactive too (eg. for a token I need to use in an incomplete task, the sage will give me a hint if I show him, but there was no real way to know I had to show him the cabin to learn how to make a trading post when every other building so far was built directly from wood/planks and stone/slabs.)

Really the only thing keeping this from being a 10/10 game is the lack of an ability to remove single tiles. (I resorted to screenshotting the map before resetting, which obviously still isn't great.) It'd make sense if this were actually a city builder, but it's a puzzle game with city builder aesthetics, which isn't the same thing.

This is literal years late to the party, but I do think this project is worth continuing. I might just pick up Assembly Planter because it looks neat, and if I do I'll be able to compare and contrast, but the miniaturization works well enough here (though tooltips and generally better UI would help, but it's a prototype, so this isn't a complaint). Hope this helps, going to go check out the rest of your stuff now.

Stop making me skip the level when what I wanted was to reset. There's no need for these two things to be controlled by the same key, even if it wasn't utterly opaque which one the key is going to trigger, which it also is. While we're at it, why do I have to reset at all when I made one misstep? Needs an undo button. Was enjoying it, but after the third unintentional skip I'm done.

that's quite alright, I'm familiar with tech-related mishaps. Whatever you did, it worked :> 

hey I'd love to buy this but apparently I can't use PayPal - is that intentional?