itch.io

I started with brute force indeed, then I tried to define some heuristics, but in fact the rules change pretty much every time you buy a perk, an upgrade, a piece or a new square, so the best solution can be pretty much anything for any position. So I gave up the idea of defining heuristics and focused on optimizing the brute force instead..

Impressive!! That’s.. a lot! Thanks for not spoiling a solution!

That was implemented at some point, but I had to remove it. I see the solver as a guide, pushing the player to understand that he needs to (at least try to) optimize, even if he does not find the optimal configuration.

Also, having a “decent” configuration is often largely enough to unlock new upgrades / new cells to buy / new prestige perks pretty fast (less than a minute usually), which would make the “exact best” configuration obsolete already…

The hints could be efficient for very early stages, but at some point, there is no difference between providing the player nothing at all, and providing 1 or 2 exact piece positions, because the complexity is still enormous (the solver literally does billions of iterations for each solving round before it breaks). I would have to almost provide the solution itself. Also this solver breaking is a reminder that brute force is not the appropriate way to solve it, because after that, you’re on your own to solve it.. This should indicate that there should be enough information on the board to exploit the pieces capabilities in various ways to obtain a “good enough” configuration to continue progressing at a good pace in the game.

Thanks for the feedback! I can say the record is above 600K for the 5x5 board here.. I considered adding a leaderboard but it might only be in a dedicated mode in the final version instead. I have considered creating a discord, but imo the amount of people actually interested in my games is not high enough to make it worth it yet… maybe in a few months, but thank you for the proposition!

Sorry I missed this answer, thats a nice way to explain it indeed! I didn’t want to go as far as providing the formula behind, but if it ends up being clearer than a complex description, I might reconsider…

That was planned all along ;) I didn’t want people to have to wait more at the end of the demo and end up hesitating between buying this upgrade or buying the last square to finish, so I wanted to be sure they would buy all the successive cycle speed upgrades as a sort of final explosion of production…

That’s… Impressive! I literally never managed to beat the solver… Might be a rounding error somewhere.. Good job, though there is definitely room for improvement in your position! Plenty of square not unlocked yet that can only increase your production (as long as you control them by at least 1 piece)!

Thank you for the feedback!

• Yes, that’s implemented in the whole game in fact, but with only 6 prestige points, I removed it in the demo to streamline the gameplay and be sure to not have people second-guessing themselves when going to prestige, since these are expected to be short prestige/reset (5 minutes or so). Stacking prestige points would mean you will have way too many new rules to understand & exploit at once afterwards…
• For the tooltips cut off, I suppose you talk about the prestige graph, but you can move the prestige scene with mouse/drag. I will make this more obvious
• This is a big one, it seems I didn’t explain the generation correctly; You produce & harvest on all the squares you control, but each cycle is a 2-steps process where multiple pieces will produce on all the square they control, but then they will all harvest on these same squares they control. Each piece harvests everything that is available on the square after the production step.. Ok, still not clear. I need to find a way to make it clearer, or even maybe to separate steps visually in game.

Hey! The prestige progress only is saved, so it should help you restart more easily if needed, but do you have more details about which popup/ at what point in the game and the freeze itself (generation is frozen, but buttons still seem active)? I’ve tried replicating this bug for hours now, but was not able to yet…

Thanks! The game is complex enough, I felt it would be a good idea to have localization to help understand it…

You can post your highscores for the demo here if you want to! The metric for the highscore is the lowest possible time to the end of the demo!

Please let me know if you encountered any issue with the translation, if you played the game in other language than English or French.

Please let me know any bugs you encounter.

There is a possible random softlock, very complex to reproduce and only on WebGL version (the buttons stay active but the generation is frozen). If you encounter this bug, please let me know which **Language ** you were using.

The game auto-saves prestige progress so you should be able to finish the game after the bug…

Or play the executable/steam version where the bug is not possible.

Thank you for letting me know!! It is fixed now!!

Great game, amazing concept; love the ambiance and the soul collection mechanic, feels unique and meaningful. Really inspiring like always..

For the end game I would’ve love to see some details about damages from the last curse, how it is calculated, and the link with the total number of collected souls. Overall, the end game felt a bit slow, but mostly because you have to maintain the mouse button pressed on that well for so long… Also I felt sad that the last upgrade of the well speed collection was still below manual speed, my hope of finally releasing that mouse button was crushed…

Haha indeed! And who knows what they could do with a pickaxe!?

Thanks! Definitely close to what I had in mind indeed for a full game..

Yeah, I definitely need to balance them, their reward is too low for now, and also they are only useful with high density but the synergy is not good yet…

Oh! didn’t see that issue in any playtests on several android mobiles.. I have no idea, is this the only webgl game where it happens for you??

Reward is more logs, and closer to spawn with a high density, but indeed the added reward might me to low for now…

Thanks a lot! Good idea indeed, I was afraid zooming would be too challenging technically with the pixel art, but I’ll see what I can do!

Yeah, it’s missing a key feature of Sigils discoveries through rune fusion for the merge part, but I took inspiration from the theme and limitations anyway and still wanted to showcase my work and this early prototype..

Not really, I’m also pretty sure I don’t have the sources anymore…

Thanks a lot! It does work, several people had their score uploaded already, but it seems like the server of the leaderboard is having issues at the moment, its an external issue, sorry about that…

Thanks a lot for the feedback!

I recall I tried to come up with a good solution for having the game centered, including the upgrade panel, but now that you say it, I cannot unsee it. I definitely got lost in the process and it’s absolutely garbage. I reworked it quickly and it does not trigger my ocd any more so I think it’s better now. It also solves the ovelapping problem and the description disappearing

I removed the automatic switch, it only occurs for the first building now (to show new players that you can select buildings).

I too feel like this is a different game, and weirdly enough I too feel nostalgic for the 1st version, but this version has a bit more depth and feel more like a finished project, not just a prototype with some ideas thrown here and there…

For the duplicates, I still do not master the leaderboard creator but they should usually not occur as they are tied to the sessions. I’ll try to change a few options but I don’t want to prevent people with the same simple nickname to post their score either..

Finally I didn’t find any case where the powerups and the number of creatures on the cell did not impact the corresponding building. If you stack them on an extractor, this extractor will still extract every 2 seconds, not faster, but will extract a lot. Same for the biomass reclaimer, you should see huge number coming out of it. The problem if you stack creatures on the forge, is you’ll have a huge construction factor, but there will be no creatures under the duolith to actually build it (which could explain why the construction stopped).

Here is the first leaderboard of the very first version of the game. May these name remain known forever.

If you find any bugs or weird behavior, you can let me know below

Damn!!!! I cannot keep it closed if I see that :D

Crazy, Pushing to the limit, only a few (4) seconds away from the developer’s record… :D

Damn… Congratz!

Well, at least game update is incoming..

Wow !! Sub-3 incoming?

Cool atmosphere and mood, and it seems you could do so many things with that simple mirror mechanic! Nice foundation I would say, keep going if you feel like it, it really seems… Intriguing!

Craaazy gameplay! Didn’t work on my peripheral vision that hard for a long time!

This is so cool! Clicked right away on Play without reading the description when lauching the game, didn’t know what to expect, that was a weird sensation to be able to flip the enntire world! And being able to keep the sun in the air also felt amazing! Only missing some distance / point counter. Well done!

These shot particles are amazing! I kinda feel like having to shoot 3 times, combined with the high delay between shots is a bit too hard when ghosts come from the top, and it could make the gameplay even more crazy if we could shoot faster, but with increasingly more enemies for the progression. Also the mirror could move maybe, or teleport? Really nice concept overall, and nicely polished

Nice idea, but damn that was hard! But rewarding when you manage to survive a bit…

Nice and fun, could have the conveyor belt go faster and faster to increase the difficulty!

Fairly easy, I wish there was more levels, and more difficult ones! Thats a good basis tho, I really like the simple 2-frames animations which makes the game really feel alive as well.