Yeah you are right. When you build something yourself, everything feels obvious, and that's exactly the trap. i wanna
try to keep the game challenging and deep, but make it accessible to as many people as possible. Here's what I'm doing: I'm adding a tutorial for the campaign and a separate one for the grand simulation. On top of that, I'm adding a short run as the entry point to the game. It's a simplified version with a built-in tutorial, so players get the soul of the game right away. Once you finish the short run, you unlock the full game and go in with a much better understanding of what you're doing. About locking progress and repeating steps: I think the short run could cover that in a way, since players go through the core loop before reaching the full game. What do you think?
I'll be uploading the new version today, or tomorrow at the latest.
Thank you!! this is exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping for, and it's clear you actually spent time with it rather than clicking around for two minutes. You're right about the wall of text. The campaign was meant to be the gentle on-ramp, so the fact that it didn't read as one tells me something important. Since you've actually played both modes, can I ask you something? Do you think a proper relaxed tutorial would be enough on its own or does the problem go deeper, and some of the mechanics themselves need to be simplified, automated, or cut? I'd much rather remove systems than bury them under more explanation, but that's a very hard thing to judge from the inside.
And thanks for catching the "read all" bug, where the paragraph repeats itself instead of continuing. Claude is working on the fix right now, so it should be in the next build.
Really appreciate you taking the time to write all this.
