itch.io

Defeating the Glade boss didn't complete the quest for defeating the Glade boss and hindered my progress. Besides that, I enjoyed this a lot!

The game description is incorrect. I experienced very many special events which occurred.

Fun game but the overall thematic message and takeaway was a bit unclear. Perhaps it could be expounded upon in a sequel or future content update?

I was going to call this a "cute little game," then I remembered that the subject matter is people senselessly dying and it's based on reality. Well, I enjoyed it, lol

This is such an amazingly creative and thematically inspired game that I completely forgot the description mentioned the use of AI in coding it. You truly made this your own through the art direction! This was such a breath of fresh air.

That said, there is some technical room for improvement, particularly in terms of various UI issues. The pop-ups have a pesky issue of overlapping each other (as well as staying on-screen too long for the ones you can't manually close), and there's an annoying repetition of certain tutorial messages that shouldn't be there (particularly the messages pointing out what's to the left and bottom of the screen). The bottom menu will stutter if your mouse is too low on the screen, which was probably the biggest flaw I noticed. Still, that's such a simple fix and it says a lot that it was the biggest flaw! There was also an issue with the drop down menu on the "island color" editor menu not working. Also, I couldn't really set it to certain colors since it felt like whatever color I selected was "filtered" through the island's default yellow/tan/sand color, meaning my attempts to make it cyan made it an off-green.

I tend to hesitate to say this, but those flaws aside, this is a special game. It's the sort of game where even playing it for 5-10 minutes, it'll stick with me for 5-10 weeks at least where I'll start thinking about it again. My favorite part was unlocking the lil kangaroos to hop around my island. It's really making me reconsider the art direction on my projects; not that I want to emulate your style, but I want to have the same passion for the visual appeal of anything I make as I can tell you had with this one. Final tiny suggestion, to balance out all the praise: It'd be cool if the player could zoom-in and zoom-out, even if only slightly, to help the world feel more "3D" and alive.

This was very great! 200 hours is already a lot to put into something, but if you took a final couple hours to iron out the tiny issues, it'd put this on a whole other level above its peers. Seriously, you've got a homerun here!

Pretty weird, but there's a certain charm to this one! The whole layout made me laugh at first, but it did grow on me. I'll avoid giving feedback on the more obvious stuff and instead single out things that stuck out to me which I think most wouldn't consider.

When I did unlock combat and was battling enemies, it was a little confusing at first. The thing that threw me off was I was clearly attacking, but the enemy health wasn't depleting. It didn't take me long to realize it was because they had armor which needed to be destroyed first, but one way to avoid player confusion would be to put the enemy armor above the enemy health, since that's where the eyes will naturally look to see your attacks having an impact.

The scrolling chiron on the top is a great addition! That said, I didn't really notice it at first because the text is so small, it's easy to miss it at first. Perhaps a background banner underneath the scrolling lane could help it stick out for new players, if you don't want to enlarge the text. It's a great feature nonetheless. My favorite message was the one about consuming 3kg of lube. One small idea is that the one about tutorial messages going away after level 100 should itself go away after something like level 200 or 250. Also, special messages such as the one about unlocking the combo system could have a special text effect to help them stick out for people who might otherwise miss them.

I wasn't able to determine what you receive from winning battles, if anything, so that might be something worth communicating to the player. Also, all bosses were available to fight early (I only noticed this after meeting the requirements for the spider boss, so I'm not sure if they were all unlocked at the same time or if unlocking the spider boss unlocked all of them). The only reason I know this is unintentional is because hovering the cursor over their battle buttons shows the requirements to unlock them, which I haven't met. Finally, I couldn't figure out how the party system functioned. I added the first ally to an empty slot, but when in combat, it showed nothing under my team. Not sure if I'm doing this wrong or right.

Keep up the work and you will have a decent experience here eventually.

Played and beat the demo on Steam today and had a great time. I also had a chance to really hear the music and sound effects; the lightning in particular sounded good to my ears! Besides that, there were some points in the upgrade tree where a newly acquired upgrade felt a bit too powerful, especially the 2nd upgrade to how much the asteroids paid out felt like a big jump. At the same time, the pricing was still adjusted accordingly to keep things feeling engaging, and I imagine that once the full game is fleshed out more and released that things of that nature will be addressed.

Honestly, the only real flaw is that it felt a bit short, but I suppose that's the point of a demo. It did leave me thinking "damn, I wish that went on longer!" In terms of smaller things, it was hard to really feel like the poison asteroids were having any real impact once broken. It is a good idea and if it did have more visual-auditory feedback to it reflecting its impact then it'd be a smart way to make the player feel that they're being strategic when they go out of their way to break them.

Wishlisted it on Steam and looking forward to the full game!

EDIT: Also, I noticed people saying that you need to add health indicators to the asteroids... but you already do have them depleting visually! Maybe add a tutorial or other information source in-game drawing attention to this? I played on a larger screen, but I can understand how on a smaller screen it'd go unnoticed by players.

Ah, thank you! Egg on my face for not thinking to check on there for a demo. I'll check it out and provide additional feedback when I have the time.

Very strange issues on my initial playthrough of the browser version. For some reason, the game started me with $100k. It wasn't clear if this was intentional. Additionally, the settings button simply doesn't work and when clicked, seems to present a text overlay meant for the "shop" button instead, except it only displays the portion of that text which overlaps with the settings button (I hope this explanation makes sense so that you can better troubleshoot this). When I click and hold on the shop button, it displays the same message, except it similarly only displays the portion overlapping with the shop button (the full text being "Prestige up!!! Prestige points: 2").

I tried to refresh the browser to reset my progress,and doing so showed a few screens at the beginning for a split second each, one referencing a tutorial (it was too fast to read). When I entered into the game proper following the developer logo splash screen, it gave me an achievement for completing the tutorial... even though there was no tutorial for me!

Additionally, the "achievements" page has invisible achievement icons. The reason I say they're invisible instead of "there's no achievement icons" is because when I move my cursor around, there's little text highlights which pop up when I'm presumably hovering over them.

I decided to still play around a little more and bought some upgrades from the shop with the seemingly unintentional initial influx of cash. The multi-ball is a bit weird; it randomly spawns extra balls when mine hits the plonks in the bottom two rows (not counting the moving plonk). It's pretty startling for there to suddenly be a bunch of extra balls. I went back to the shop and noticed the greyed out "Moving plonk" option, which I had already purchased, turns back into the lighter non-grey state as if I could purchase it again. This seems to happen when my cash reaches a certain threshold, as it goes back to greyed out when I spend down my money on other upgrades, but I didn't catch what dollar amount triggers this (somewhere around $10k or so).

That all aside, I did like the spawner for the balls which would speed up and slow down. Considering how little visual activity there is in a game like this, any details like that tend to stand out. I also really liked how if the ball got caught up somewhere that it'd shake a little to keep it from staying there.

This is both too barebones in terms of concept and execution, and has a not-insignificant amount of issues at the moment. Needs more work. I played the browser version specifically.

Wanted to give more feedback beyond what's already been said (and some insight into the issues I experienced): I did enjoy what's here and what can be accessed. The black hole situation an interesting framing device for what's, at its core, a pretty simple gameplay loop. It was confusing at first in that I thought I had to click instead of it being a timed attack, but once I figured out what was going on, it was clear to me it was well-implemented.

Now, I did have the aforementioned issues others have reported in that at a certain point, the progress bar with the "1/10" denoting the current size of the black hole stops working despite working initially. I was able to deduce from the way different perks behaved that it's not "destroying" the asteroids for whatever reason, and that it seemed to break completely once I purchased the first perk to increase asteroid "density" (but correlation isn't necessarily causation here). There's obviously a few ways to address that issue, so I'm interested in playing it more once that's ironed out!

What's here is fun, the visual design works great (I perused the press kit and the screenshots of further gameplay looked very nice with the "lightning chain" effect and the different color asteroids), and the balancing felt good for the portions I could experience. It'll be interesting to see where this goes from here!

I'm a little bit of a theology nerd, so the "demiurge" concept caught my eye; then, the first sentence in the game description threw me through a loop! What an inspired combination of gaming mechanics. While I was slightly disappointed to find out that the lore of the game is a bit different than the real world lore of the "demiurge" as an evil, corrupted God/creator, the game is still very intriguing in concept and execution.

The first thing that stuck out to me is how beautiful the game is visually! The rainbow trail following your cursor, the particle effects of the bubbles once popped, and the adorably cozy world-building to contrast against it; I'm shocked that more people aren't remarking on this aspect of the game. The only real downside is that it makes the tiny imperfections stick out a bit more. To be fair, the only thing which was off to me visually was certain UI spacing issues, which are understandable for a quick game jam project.

The one thing which stuck out to me as a negative in terms of gameplay design was the ambiguity of how long the bubble popping sessions were to last. The first time I returned to space to get more essence, I was worried I had missed a prompt telling me to press a certain key to return to the world. Honestly, I couldn't tell you the best fix for this particular point since the idea of a timer or a "bubbles remaining" count don't seem to match the spirit of the game world. Perhaps a colorful bar which you can watch deplete as these rounds carry on? It's hard to say, but something to think about.

That all said, while I did encounter the other bugs others mentioned, I wouldn't characterize this as "pretty buggy" by any means, and you could easily turn the "building things in the sky" bug into a feature. You're the demiurge/God, after all, of course you can put wolves in clouds! One thing I didn't see mentioned which was awkward was the mana count on the top once you reach 1k of a mana resource. The way it displays as "001k" is something I can understand from a developer's perspective, but it's confusing at first as the player (or at least it was for me).

All-in-all, I like this a lot, and it wouldn't take much to fix up what's already here into a great experience. There's plenty potential to build on this further, too, such as incorporating a "prestige" system to create new worlds by sacrificing the currently constructed world (perhaps you could go Biblical with it and implement it as a "great flood" you use to "cleanse" the world, since there's already clear Biblical motifs). Personally, I like that you can't remove what you've already created, since it forces you to be more careful and considerate with your choices.

Great stuff! Hopefully more people praise the parts here that work very well.

This definitely needed more time in the oven before being put out (no pun intended). The biggest issue, but certainly not the only one, is that the "flying pig" is completely broken. The png doesn't display correctly, and the "free upgrade" that it grants players isn't being registered as free, but instead registers as an attempt to purchase the "free" upgrade (which then fails because it's selecting a highly priced upgrade). The only upgrade I received which functioned properly was the temporary double bacon buff. 

Then there's a slew of UI oddities which make things feel sloppy. The text for the "upgrades" button is slightly lower than the other buttons in the top banner. From the "+20 per click" upgrade and downward, the "buy" button is slightly lower than how the other "buy" buttons are positioned relative to the upgrade description.  When in the browser's non-fullscreen view, the game displays a scrollbar on the right, but doesn't allow me to scroll with a mouse wheel. The little banner on the bottom of the screen is annoying as well; there's no real purpose for it and it makes scrolling awkward.

All-around, if this was a beginner's first attempt at programming a functional clicker game, then I can't fault it too much. At the same time, the are broken, there's plenty room for improvement in the UI, and there's nothing conceptually to set this clicker game apart in any way. It's bizarre to me that there's an option to pay for a download for something that no one would even want to play for free.

Pretty good stuff! I've "played" this more than some of the proper games on itch.io, lol. The only weird thing is the physics on the "plinko" mechanic; they feel a bit floaty, but what do I know? They're probably fine. It's exciting see one of the four combatants launch a 1000+ bullet assault and hoping the others can survive it, or even mount a comeback. Nice job on maximizing the amount of fun you can get out of zero user input.

The two biggest issues to me: The logic dictating the paddle when on Auto mode is either far too simple or outright broken (as another commenter noted, it always prefers tracking the furthest left ball, which is silly), and you can't easily tell which arrow corresponds to the currently queued ball on the paddle when there's more than 1 ball queued.

Besides that, there is potential here if the balancing can be ironed out and those two issues could be addressed. The playing field feels a bit small, too. It'd feel a bit more engaging if it was about 2-2.5x as wide, and the height sensibly scaled to fit that change.

Extremely simple game here. I'll start with what I liked, which was the cute variations on the fish; this kept me playing for a couple minutes instead of a couple seconds. Second, I did like the way the single cloud was rotated to create the illusion of multiple types of clouds.

The big issue is how even when I read the instructions on how to play by using the space bar, it was slightly difficult to figure out how to play at first. I'd chalk this up to two factors: The "play" button in the top-right (player's minds intuitively tell them that this should be clicked, but clicking it does nothing), and the delay between when the graphics are first loaded and when you can actually play the game. The second factor doesn't need to be addressed as much as the first, but you can simply update the itch.io page description to have better instructions, or add an in-game prompt letting them know they want to use the space bar.

Still, it does work, and for how simple it is, it was more fun than I expected on first inspection.

Considering the description, it's somewhat difficult to know what should be criticized or chalked up to a reflection of this being an AI's attempt at a proof-of-concept. That said, I do feel like this idea has some legs, that being the combination of a monster hunting mechanic with an idle resource management system. There's a TON of work which would need to go into taking this from its current state into something playable, but the tiny bit of what's here did hook me.

Since you mention you intend on essentially scrapping what's here and making it without AI, it's not easy to give much more pointed feedback, but I'll try in case some of it is of use. The biggest problem in this tiny slice is that there's no risk involved in the battles. Sure, the enemy regains some health if you fail to capture them, but they never fight back and there's no penalty for running away. Perhaps the player, if they're to be the one partaking in the battles, could have their own HP bar and take damage, and lose resources should they lose? Instead, you could start the game with a "starter" creature and use your creatures in battle, allowing you to level them up and gain XP, etc.

If the resources have any functional purpose currently, it is wholly unclear (except for gold, of course). My numbers are going up, but it's hard to feel any sense of accomplishment when there's no real incentive to raise them. As far as the creatures, it was fun unlocking the second biome to see what new creatures could be acquired. However, the current XP scaling is very painful, even for a tiny proof-of-concept. All battles pay out 5 XP, and the XP necessary for each level is the current level multiple by 100; to get from level 5 to level 8 is 360 battles! I was willing to tough it out to reach level 5 and see the desert biome, but not the additional 360 to check out the animal breeding. The breeding is definitely an interesting idea; if there's any sort of implementation here thus far, I was simply unable to reach it to give any further comment or criticism.

I'm going to rapid-fire some other thoughts that didn't fit anywhere else in this comment: If the four letters on the creature cards hold any significance (P, S, I, E), it is entirely unclear what that might be. For some reason, the battle screen is open and present on every tab. When I did reach level 5 and unlock the desert, the option didn't make itself available until I actually went to the exploration tab (originally, I figured it hadn't been implemented quite yet until I stumbled upon this). Due to how itch.io's webpages work, the little notification blurb in the top-right is obscured by itch.io's own overlaid buttons; might be a good idea to move those to the top-left. It'd be nice if when hovering over the resources, once they starting truncating the exact number, if you could view precisely how many you possess.

Again, it's not easy to know what is a result of your vision being shaped by your design and what is a quirk of utilizing AI in the coding process, but the fact that I have so much feedback for such a simple prototype should let you know how compelling the concept was for me! I'm not a game developer myself, so I can't help in terms of telling you how to code, but I hope this feedback can help you achieve your ideal game! This has a ton of potential and would make for an engaging experience. And please, for the sake of people testing this in its infancy, please fix the XP balance issue ASAP! It shouldn't take 360 battles to grow 3 levels when there's so little content.

Brilliant use of the assets present! Simple, yet so beautiful. There is SO much potential in this little game!

Some ideas, and I do understand some of this might not be feasible considering the reliance upon the Pixel Planet Generator: Much like the Sol "level" changes as you purchase the upgrades, it'd be very cool if the planets "reacted" visually to the upgrades you purchase.

The space background is also very nice, but it'd be better it had some motion to it, such as slowly rotating. Remaining static does detract from the experience a little bit. It'd also be neat if the player could choose to only apply the CRT effect to the planet viewport.

There's some work which could be done in regards to adjusting the balance of the numbers, as I noticed pretty fast that each power station provides enough power for 10 factories and that predictability is a little boring, but this is still very solid in its current state! Great stuff here.

First thing, before I got into the game, the settings menu did make me laugh with how it has so much empty space for only one actual setting (for the video options, that is). The settings menu wouldn't allow me to close it either, forcing me to refresh the browser before I could actually play the game; no idea if this means settings can't be saved once changed.

Once in the game, I noticed the zooming being "anchored" on the top-left corner, and it was slightly difficult to get used to peculiarity. It'd make more sense if it was anchored to the center of the display, or to the cursor's current position. The panning was also a bit slow while zoomed further out, and would require me to drag the full available cursor space a couple times to get a decent survey of the area. Its speed is great when zoomed in closer, though.

A detail I really enjoyed was the tiny leaves fluttering around across the otherwise empty blue void of the background. Some subtle clouds could also help to keep it visually stimulating while matching the theme and aesthetic. However, the UI on the right seems to have some unusual behaviors. When I use right-click to deselect an object, the pertinent button stays highlighted as though I have it selected. The research lab button changes color when hovered (and while another item is selected), but the others don't share this behavior (aside from the button text, which changes slightly).

Additionally, it was unclear how the wood resource was to be used until I purchased a research lab and realized that the associated cost for the lab was in wood, not leaves. The game description on the itch.io page doesn't seem to mention this (I read it over a few times to be sure before commenting). It'd be useful to denote that it requires wood to purchase by putting a symbol by the listed price on the button (and a leaf symbol for the other items)

One thing that I really enjoyed was the realization that each subsequent research lab offered the same upgrades, but at the original price points, so I could strategically buy extra research labs, buy the +1 grass tile spawn upgrade, and really feel like I had employed strategy to help me win. Final recommendation: It'd be cool if the game explicitly displayed how many resources each tree grants you when planted.

I apologize if some of these things were already noticed, but I wanted to be thorough in case it wasn't known. I also didn't experience the issues which the other commenter reported.

Nothing too groundbreaking in terms of the concept. Weirdest quirk was something that seemed to be an issue where I'd click the tippy-tap button for 10-15 clicks, then move my cursor away, and then the game would suddenly register a surge of clicks I never actually made. Not sure if this is some intended mechanic or a weird glitch (I'm playing on a Firefox browser on Linux, if that matters), but it did affect my experience slightly.

That aside, it's a fun, simple clicker game. I actually enjoyed earning the cosmetics from battle since the amount of cactus points awarded from battle didn't feel worth it. Any time I received cactus points from battle, I felt like I could've earned that many, or more, from simply clicking. If the issue with duplicates was fixed up, such as by awarding ample cactus points when a duplicate is "pulled," it'd be a fun diversion from the clicking portions.

If a shop is implemented, it'd be cool if it was in addition to pulling cosmetics as battle rewards, or if battles granted a secondary currency which is used on purchasing cosmetics.

Nice concept! A couple thoughts though: There's a typo where it says "FORTUNE BY STRENGHT" when it should be "FORTUNE BY STRENGTH" instead. The corresponding description of this upgrade is also both incorrect and confusing. It should be "which ores" instead of "what ores," although I still don't understand what this description is trying to say. The "PICKPOCKET" description has a similar error where it should say "items from a trade" instead of "items of a trade."

Final thing, and this is just a preference on my part, but I would swap the positions of the two buttons in the bottom-left so that the pickaxe upgrade is on the far left, and the recipes menu second from the left. That said, this is a good idea and fun to play.

Really great stuff with lots of potential. Biggest issue right off the bat is the "move diorama" control being very weird. If the diorama is already centered and your cursor is in the center of the screen, then it works fine (although I'd either reverse the direction in which it draws or add an option to invert it). However, if you're offset from the center, or your cursor is offset, then it does a weird "snap" to a viewing position that's way off from how you had it.

In addition, it's unclear that you can only zoom in or zoom out while holding down the left mouse button. Even once I figured this out, the zooming is strange in that it begins as zoomed in as possible, and only allows you to zoom out, despite the fact that there's no reason to zoom out. The diorama is so small and there's so much empty space in the world already; it'd be cool if the zooming limits were adjusted so you could zoom in more.

Despite those control quirks, this is a very charming take on the idle genre, and this has tons of potential so long as more work goes into it. It might be a good idea to put in more detailed explanations of what some of the upgrades, since some aren't that obvious (fish population). I also learned from one of your comments that there's a "maximum limit on how much fish is available in the water to be caught" as well as a separate rate at which the wild fish replenish; perhaps that could be added somewhere in game where players can see those numbers and watch them change with their purchased upgrades.

Great stuff. I enjoyed the use of resources and how things were balanced. Visually, a great experience as well, as the constantly growing buildings make it fun to keep progressing.

However, one small issue, and this might be a problem with my underpowered laptop, but once I reach about brew level 40 or so, not all of the resources being collected by my NPCs/buildings were actually being registered in the game logic. Workers on the salt mine would keep harvesting substance, but several in a row would simply not register before suddenly they'd begin registering again. It wasn't only the salt mines, as each resource began experiencing this issue with whether or not they'd register fluctuating throughout.

Even still, it was very fun to play. When possible, I'll test it again on my Windows 10 gaming rig to see if it was specifically an issue with playing it on a browser on underpowered hardware. I'm running Firefox on Linux, and everything else worked great!

Only other recommendation would be a way to review previously displayed tutorial messages, as I had to restart my run due to accidentally clicking through an important tutorial message about the morel farms.

Good stuff!The fish mechanic was a little wonky to figure out at first, and it'd be nice if the petting was a sort of "area of effect" deal where you can pet multiple stacked cats at once instead of (presumably) the topmost cat. Besides that, Kitty13k is a great idea, but a bit too OP and it led to me simply never upgrading any other cats. Besides that, for what is there, it's fun.

Final idea: A third upgrade to the cats which decrease the rate at which their meters deplete.

Simple little game, but I really enjoy what's here! I especially really liked how the cost to upgrade the hens scaled with how many hens you have purchased. It adds a degree of strategy that got me thinking about whether to get an extra hen or save up instead. If given more content, this could be a pretty fun clicker game.

Okay game. My first couple playthroughs didn't go well as in my first one, I fell off the map by walking through the fog which spawns villagers. In the second playthrough, I couldn't figure out where or how to gather resources. Once I figured out the basics of the game, it was ridiculously easy without being very fun. It's a neat little concept, but the balance isn't quite where it needs to be, the 3D trees constantly flicker, and it doesn't feel like there's any real challenge or strategy here. Just get the two basic resources, build the one tower, and then repeat. Has potential, but needs plenty work.

Very great stuff! The upgrades and their costs are well balanced, the visual element is stimulating and rewarding, and it's got organic gameplay shifts that feel natural and make the game more fun. Can't say enough good things about this. I especially enjoyed the background; simple, and subtle.

I followed the tutorial images and the written tutorial, but I cannot figure out how exactly to "craft" the recipes. I've setup a farming tile, set it to produce wheat, and have purchased the kitchen tile which shows all the recipes, and selected "flour," but nothing happens. Tried several different things, but nothing is allowing me to produce flour. I even tried out the other recipes, such as toasted pumpkin seed, but either the tutorial is incomplete or the crafting doesn't work currently.

The tutorial went perfectly fine, but after it had me save the game in the options, things got really weird. The first thing that was off was that the timer for the tributes was stuck at 0.0s with seemingly no way to fix it. I figured I'd save, refresh the browser, and that'll fix it... which it did! However, that's when things got REALLY weird.

The upgrades I'd purchased for collecting more resources were still listed as having been purchased, but the upgrades were no longer in effect. My clicks went from yielding 4-5 resources per click to only one, but the menu showed I had already purchased several upgrades. Due to this, if I wanted to upgrade further, it carried the higher cost associated with having 4 upgrades, making it painfully imbalanced.

I dig the concept and the art, but it needs more testing to iron out some wonky glitches/bugs/issues.

Well made in the sense that there's no glitches, but simply not fun to play.

Some interesting concepts here. The "Sacrifice" mechanic is pretty interesting and fun to use in its own right. However, the method to win the main game is incredibly straightforward (I really don't get what the other commenter means about being able to employ strategy): Max out luck, and then keep buying cards over and over. Once you're pulling the dragon, unicorn, and griffin each time, you will be staring at the card opening screens far more than the actual card battles. It's also very annoying having the enter an action 3 times to open the card packs and turns an incremental autobattler into a button masher.

Leaves something to be desired in terms of gameplay.

Biggest issue by far is that the controls don't explain that you can change your club; this should be an easy fix, so I won't harp on it. Besides that, the game is incredibly charming and a compelling mix of genres. The incremental portion is a bit confusing as it's not completely clear what exactly I'm "upgrading" about the clubs and it's a bit distracting going between the golfing/incremental aspects. Final thing is it'd be nice if there were a faster method of adjusting your aim, such as holding shift to speed it up or auto-aiming in a particular direction by clicking.

Still, a genuinely fun concept which is executed well enough to be worth playing in its current state. It'd be interesting to see how this develops and if more features are implemented.

Massive improvement over the "Bonk Demons" predecessor. However, there's some baffling design choices here. Namely, controls in the skill tree are sluggish and could easily be enhanced by allowing scrolling in/out, and dragging the screen to pan across the skill tree.

The gameplay itself is much better here, but still leaves a lot to be desired. The biggest issue is the hit detection of your swings, and the inability to control which direction you're swinging. Intuitively, it'd make sense that if you're clicking to the right of your character that you'll swing in that direction. Instead, it's hard to figure out what actually dictates the direction of your swing, leaving you smacking the ground while standing right beside a mob of enemies.

It's a step in the right direction. The balancing is still confusing as you can afford around a dozen upgrades after your first round, but then you'll need to run through several more rounds just to afford a single upgrade shortly thereafter. Feels like a throwaway project, and definitely still not something anyone should play. There's a fun game in there if it can be fixed up.

Pretty bad game. The "bonking" is always exactly the same, with no evolution or paradigm shifts (no, the simple upgrades don't truly change how the game feels to play). The "merchants" which auto-farm gold don't enhance the game and don't make much sense seeing as you have to be in the merchants screen to farm their gold, and seem to only be a replacement for the actual gameplay.

Typically, the purpose of a game like this having the short "rounds" with upgrades in between is to let the player feel like they're progressing further and further as they purchase upgrades. In this game, the first round and the 100th rounds are basically all the same, except that the final upgrade "Perfection" will shower the player with gold... after gold has become completely useless.

Impressive for something made so fast, but there's no reason to play this.

Not a fun game. You'll spend more time hammering away blindly at a button wondering when the next upgrade will make itself known, as the cost of the 3 clickers grows to cost far more than they could possibly be worth very quickly. Competently made, but brutally unfun to attempt to play.

Bizarre little game. The novelty is in replacing the traditional "clicking" of clicker games with mouse-based "writing," which mimics writing like a scribe. However, it's more like scribbling in execution, as you can "write" anywhere on the page and it'll fill up all the same. A tad confusing at first, then tedious, as the initial barrier to real income is arduous. Once you pass the initial hump, around 10-20 scribes, the books really start to write themselves and the idling begins. It gets fun from there as you can improve your books aesthetically.

Besides a real lack of content at present (understandable for such an early project), the biggest issue is by far the UI. The main problems begin with the three icons beneath the "Chapters:" UI text, which represent the progress of the currently written book. The default icon is a blurry pink/black checkerboard, which seems to be unintentional as it doesn't match the aesthetic of the rest of the game.

Apart from this, the game's UI features are spaced in a very odd manner. There's uneven spacing between most elements, and some UI text is overlapping their relevant icons (namely the button to hire more scribes). Also, the page itself seems awkwardly placed over the background image. A couple possible fixes could be to either "fade out" the page once complete and "fade in" the replacement blank page, or to make the page itself smaller and put it on top of a leather book cover to give a sense of depth, or both.

I do love that the game only explains its one novel mechanic, which is the "writing" on the page, and leaves the player to organically experience and find out the rest of the mechanics which mirror the common tropes of the genre. The background subtly changing to reflect your progress was a nice touch, although the page takes up so much space that it's hard to fully appreciate in its current form.

Sorry if this comment is a bit wordy. The premise is intriguing and I wanted to give my thoughts on it, and this is how I think. I respectfully disagree with the other commenter that the problem is lack of explanation for the mechanics; the mechanics are straightforward and sensible, and the one original mechanic is explained well by the game. My one tentative recommendation for the writing mechanic is perhaps it could require the player's mouse to be roughly where the new text is being generated, or give a bonus if the player does so. Regardless, this is a great idea!

Hard to call this a "game." It's a slideshow that counts how many times you click on it with no concern for whether you actually click the dog. There's a persistent link to some garbage article written around a year ago that, and I have no proof for this last part, appears to be some weird SEO boosting nonsense.

The game seems to be a slapdash effort to get people to "play" this "game" thinking it's an idler/clicker game, see the persistent link to the article, open it, and then artificially boost the article's "clicks." No clue how this is allowed on itch, and if it is allowed, it should never be played by anyone ever.