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Yeah, this is really a 2D game.  I've been learning 3D tools in Unity recently so I forced it a bit on this project ;)

I see.  That's also a great point, it's currently what your mouse is pointed at, not what you're holding!

Very cool!  I didn't realize that the selected planet mattered for where the new orbit is created initially, but I realized how neat this concept is after discovering that!  The funny, brief descriptions of the types of planet add a nice charm to the game too :)

I think a parallax effect on the background stars would be really nice when dragging the screen view around!

I'm not sure how the speed of the newly added planet is determined when you buy it...  It seemed like some orbited at a normal pace, but some were very slow or not moving at all.  I was worried I had placed them in a "bad" spot initially, because points are awarded per orbit, but they seem to award points regularly despite not having moved much in their orbit, so it's probably a visual bug.

I think the pseudo-chaotic motion of planets nested in several layers of orbits is the most interesting part of this game for sure!  I'd love to see something like an area-based buff that you can buy (like a static nebula or something) that encourages you to try to make wild geometric patterns of orbits to make strong planets pass through or stay within a particular global space more often.  Or even to buy if you *notice* that your wild solar system makes a particular planet stay almost still relative to the sun.  This could give some deeper strategy to the structure of the solar system, beyond what you already have with the "inner orbit" multiplier!

Thanks for the feedback!  I totally agree, having an indicator for how far you are would be great to judge whether it's time to end a session or not.  Also a level selector from the title screen, so once you know the "name" of each puzzle from the indicator (even if it's just a number), you can come back later and jump straight to where you left off!

Thanks for playing!

Thanks for the feedback!  I totally agree that the pulse movement and effects need some player-controlled configuration.  Some people want it to play longer, and some want it shorter!  Being able to click to skip is also a great suggestion with very little downside to include.

Thanks for playing!

<3

Thanks for the feedback!  I agree, having the ability to rotate with the mouse would remove the need for a keyboard at all for core gameplay, and make the game much more mobile-friendly!  I think I would add it to left-click, rather than right-click, because this maps better to the mobile platform.

Thanks for playing!

Thanks for the feedback!  I agree, having the ability to rotate by clicking on a block would remove the need for a keyboard at all for core gameplay, and make the game much more mobile-friendly!

The pulse speed also definitely needs a slider that lets the player have more control over the pace they want.  I band-aid fixed this for some levels like the four-leaf clover, since it was painfully slow haha.  But the pulse should really move at a speed proportional to how far it's about to travel, perhaps.

Thanks for playing!

Thanks for the feedback!  I agree, the camera angle could easily be higher, maybe even close to vertical.  Thanks for playing!

Thanks for the amazing feedback!  You've hit pretty much every theme that I've seen brought up in different ways across other playtesters, and it's all definitely worth thinking about--especially the "back of the grid" control issues and an indication of how "optimal" a solution is, given that there are several in many cases, for the hyper-optimizers out there :)

I'm curious what you mean by "more snappy"?  If anything, I feel like the way blocks snap to the grid when hovering over it is as snappy as it could be / too snappy, in my opinion.  Maybe you mean snapping in place before even reaching the grid, when coming from outside?  That could be interesting to experiment with.

Thanks for playing!

Maybe!  My previous jam games were fun to make but weren't inspiring me to work on them any more.  I really like how this one turned out though, so it's possible!  One mechanic I was excited for but had to cut was blocks that rotate 90 or maybe 180 degrees right after the pulse moves through them.  I think this would add a cool dynamic aspect during "runtime" of the pulse.

Thanks for playing!

Thanks for the feedback!  There's definitely plenty to improve with the visuals in general.

As for the controls, one theme I've seen coming up in other feedback is that dragging blocks around near the back of the grid (farthest from the camera) can feel a little hard to control, or that the blocks get returned to the table when it felt like they should have locked into the back row.  I think it has to do with the camera angle and how I raycast the mouse position to the puzzle's grid (which is very low to the table, while the blocks are tall), but I'm not sure how to improve it without making placing blocks in the *front* of the grid feel equally janky.  Having a more vertical camera angle is probably the easiest solution!

Thanks for playing!

Thanks for the feedback!  I totally agree with the tedium of placing the blocks once you already know what you want (especially the 4-leaf clover level... I built that one so many times while playtesting haha).  The last comment I replied to suggested a way to "draw" the path, and use available blocks automatically, which I think would be hard to implement but really cool if it works!

Thanks for playing!

Thanks for the feedback!  I totally agree that the pulse speed could be faster across the board, and should probably have a player-controlled slider to adjust the speed even more.

Drawing the path is a cool suggestion!  Building the path can be tedious (especially for levels like the 4-leaf clover) when you already know what you want.

Thanks for playing!

I love that!  I got some feedback that a "minimum blocks required" note would be fun for the players that like to hyper-optimize their solutions, but a "maximum usable blocks" could also be fun!

Thanks for playing!

I think that's a great suggestion!  There's no action tied to just clicking on a block, or to the mouse wheel, so this would make a lot of sense to include as an option!

Clicking to rotate would be particularly useful in making the game more mobile-friendly, which a few people have mentioned would be a good platform for it.

Thanks for playing!

I totally agree on the pulse movement being a bit slow in general.  I got that feedback in some final playtesting and sped it up on several levels (I'm looking at you, 4-leaf Clover), but didn't have time to tune it evenly or make a slider so that people could change it themselves.  Thanks for playing!

Thanks for the feedback!  I agree that graphics were not a priority on this project, so that's totally fair :)

I have to disagree with simple mechanics being a downside--Personally, I think the amount of thought required for later puzzles is sufficient, especially given that the underlying system is simple.  But, that said, there's also definitely room for more mechanics as well.  I had ideas for blocks that rotate when the pulse exited them, different colors of pulses that would need to activate corresponding colored gates, gates that must be a part of the path on the infinite loop, not just passed through at some point, etc.  Many got cut due to the game jam time limit unfortunately.  Are there other mechanics you think would be interesting to spice things up?

Thanks for playing!

Yes, the extra blocks are to provide some more flexibility, creativity, and experimentation in the puzzles!

Initially, I put only the blocks required to create the solution that **I** came up with, but in some early playtesting with friends, they found solutions that would have been possible given a few extra blocks!  I thought that their solutions were equally valid as mine, so I started adding a few extra of each "minor" type of block (the L's and I's), because they don't really change the ability to loop a path.  They just allow for different shapes within the same "topology", if you will.

I also found for some levels that being able to assume all blocks would be used allowed for some logical inferences that were a little too strong for the difficulty I wanted the puzzles to have.  Demonstrating early on that blocks would be left over meant that players have to think about what path they *want* to make, not what paths are *possible* to make!

Also, some other feedback I got is that I could have a final "you used X blocks, but there's a solution that only uses X-1 blocks!" note that might be fun for the players that like to optimize.

Thanks for playing!

I think optional hint systems are great!  I'm not sure what I would provide as a hint that doesn't give too much away... maybe the placement of a single critical block, like a T or an X piece?  I think this would be a great addition if good hints are crafted.  Thanks for playing!

I think that's great feedback.  An improvement to this might be having the wire "corners" be an arc that the pulse follows.  This would allow the T piece to be asymmetric with a much more obvious turning direction, kinda like the character て.  Thank you for playing!

I was so convinced that WASD should work that I almost thought the game was frozen before i could start!  Especially with Z to reset, I was almost dead half of the time by the time I got my hand back over to the arrow keys from Z when I started another round!  The game seems to run great though, so good work!

Clever!  I found it a bit unforgiving to reset the whole game from one mistake.  Perhaps there could be a soft reset to the beginning of the level at the cost of a life or something, and earn more lives by completing levels!  It's such a simple but fun concept though!

Mutually exclusive branches sounds so fun!! I want to play it :)

Thanks for the feedback!  I agree, a sandbox / level designer mode would be a great addition.  A level counter or select menu would also be great.  Leaving and trying to get back to one of the later levels would be quite annoying.

Amazing!

As for putting damage upgrades in front of the Tanker--I'd suggest at least doing it in parallel rather than as a requirement to unlock them.  Otherwise you're essentially lowering their health, which kind of negates their special property!

I think giving the player CHOICES on how they want to progress is the fun bit.  Even something like exposing enemy stats instead of suggesting a strategy might put more power into the players' hands to make their own choice and live with the consequences.  If there's a big number in the HP stat, with maybe a description like "defensive shapes" or something rather than "go buy damage before buying this!", it will make the player feel more clever when they decide to prioritize the damage upgrade first!

I think making enemy upgrades cheap to encourage progression is a great idea.  I didn't notice that, but I think I enjoyed the game more because of it!

Check out the game Nodebuster if you haven't  -- it has a unique "combat" system and a nice progression.  The shop has a good system to represent the bazillion states an upgrade item can be in.

Numbers go up, car go brrrr, game is fun.  Very clean in general, and has sounds that don't get annoying when you spam buttons. The background music is a little repetitive, but not annoying.

Most of my critiques revolve around visibility of information. I feel like in idle / incremental games, information is king:

- During the early game, I was really wishing for a way to see the boost meter while not in the car view.  Obviously, this was solved later on, but perhaps this should be a default feature, not an unlock.  Maybe the upgrade permanently activates the boost, but allows you to OVERBOOST into a purple bar instead of green.

- I was sleeping on Acceleration for a long time, because it wasn't clear HOW MUCH faster cars would accelerate, plus it came with an active downside of increased fuel consumption.  In an incremental game, I really do not want the numbers to go DOWN!  Number only go up.  Always up.  Brrrrrrrrrrt.  Just remove the fuel consumption increase, honestly.  It's realistic, but it feels bad.  I wouldn't have realized it was missing if it had never existed!

- Until mid game when I unlocked the Boost upgrade, I had no idea what Boost actually did.  I was wondering if it makes cars go... faster?  Run out of gas faster?  Accelerate faster?  I ignored boost upgrades for a lot of early game because of this, because the impact wasn't obvious.

- I would love to see a preview of what the next major upgrades do, like the prestige and boost upgrades. It feels a little weird to fork over $50,000 for ???.  Usually I was buying those things last, just to presumably get more car unlocks available.  But I might have prioritized them if I knew they unlocked entirely new, very powerful features!

- Visibility on the base trophies a car earns.  I'm pretty sure these were different?  There's a bunch of multipliers in different places like each finish line and individual car multipliers, but it was hard to tell which car to prioritize without any stats on the proportion of income from each car, or a way to figure it out myself.  The little popups when crossing lines were way too small/quick to rely on here.

- Holding shift to buy a stack of upgrades is great, but show me the price of the full stack I'm about to buy! I'd rather not be able to buy any of the stack at all but know its cost (that I can't afford), rather than buy half a stack that it turns out I can't afford all of.  You can always purchase individual upgrades if you want to go as far as possible, given that you can see the full stack isn't in your price range.

And finally, the only feedback not related to information visibility--give a final upgrade to WIN!  I need to feel a sense of closure after clicking so many buttons :)

Overall, great game!  I don't take the time to give detailed feedback unless the game is cool, so great work!

I laughed out loud when the dude just pulled a gun on me after I pushed his buttons too hard.

I think this is a clever dialogue loop for your first game!  It reminds me of Bandersnatch, in the Black Mirror universe.  You should check that out if you haven't!  It's fun to learn about how characters behave in a variety of situations at the same point in time.

There are a few typos, but that's not a big deal.  I would have loved to see some more complexity in shaping the conversation!  It seems like there's a "right" and "wrong" answer to most "storylines" (like the invitation to the park, or the birthday gift, etc), and then you move on to the next one if you don't get shot in the head.  It would be cool for the decisions to have longer term effects and special endings for different combinations!

Great work on submitting your first game!

I like this take on the "help yourself in the future", like Talos Principle clones.  The asymmetry of the clones is super interesting!  I'd love to see a way to reduce the overhead of sequencing everything in your head is it gets more complicated, though.  It's hard enough with a single symmetric clone, let alone 2-3 other clones with different scopes and abilities.

I don't think I made it very far into the game because my brain started melting with four different gates that require coordination between multiple clones to open in a specific sequence.  It's hard to learn what buttons do on the first loop when the second loop (which can't have happened yet) is required.  I appreciate that the second grey guy starts on a button, but it was easy to miss that that's why the first button worked.  I gave up after realizing that I need to craft a whole sequence between two clones just to find out what tools I'm working with in the puzzle (what each button does).

Very cool idea though, I think it has potential with some refining!  Like I said, the asymmetry is a really interesting twist on the other versions I've seen of this general idea.  Great work!

Before I dive into my critiques, just know that it's because I think this game works well that I spent a while playing it and thinking about what could have been even better!  I especially liked how enemies have different speeds, and some "enemies" (the golden ones) should be dodged rather than intercepted.  It gave a lot more depth than just "turn towards whatever's closest to you"!  I also appreciate the shop polish where text would zoom in instead of just appearing when you mouse over.  Everything else is clean and fun in general, too!

The first thing that felt a little off to me, was that you had to unlock the enemy that "you should really upgrade your damage for these" as a requirement to actually upgrade your damage at all.  It felt a bit like I was being forced to point the proverbial gun at my foot, and made me feel like I needed to save up a lot to unlock the enemy and those upgrades in one go.  The same was true for the spikey enemy, although there was a set of HP upgrades in front, so this is slightly better.  I think these should have been reversed, perhaps--gate the damage upgrades behind the spikers and gate the bigger HP upgrades behind the tanks.  There could be some initial HP upgrades (as there already are) to encourage the HP -> spiker -> DMG -> tank path, but still allow for players to unlock enemies quickly if they just want to SEND IT.

The Tank needs a little balancing, I think--with no damage upgrades, it felt like it had as much health as the boss? I expected 2-3 hits to kill them initially, not 4-5, and 1 after fully upgrading damage as requested.

Regen is a great idea for an upgrade, but it feels a bit OP currently.  It might need a bit of tuning to continue (as it effectively does now) to make mistakes feel less punishing, but not start being used as a mechanic to just ignore many of the little triangles.  I started doing that closer to the end and it felt bad letting things hit me, but my HP was staying full still.

Knockback is also a fun mechanic, but too extreme in my opinion.  Especially after the knockback increase upgrade, which i shouldn't have purchased, I kept wondering why bosses kept spawning... but then I realized it was just the same boss coming back after like 15 seconds!  I wondered why I had 1-shot a boss, and then realized it was the one I had been hitting for a while.

The economy also probably needs some tuning--I bought all of the first set of money upgrades (before the "self" enemy) after buying the cheap (sub-$50) enemy types and hp/damage upgrades.  At that point I could basically just farm money until the $1000 threshold to buy the "WIN" upgrade.

Major nitpick: The BUY text in the shop can also probably go away once you've followed the instruction!  And the prices increasing after buying the last one doesn't make a lot of sense--they could just say MAX or something to make it clear that they're not for purchase anymore.

Again, amazing game though.  I don't play many of the games I look at for very long, or spend time thinking about feedback unless I enjoyed it, so great work!

It's a bit hard to hold E and also move, and I think shadows stopped spawning once I started forcing the loop to end with L?  I wasn't getting shadows at all in level 3 because i reset early on.

Cool idea, I wish the graphics matched the banner more!  (did you make that yourself or was it generated?)

Very cute!

I kept dying when I tried to do two quick turns and the second one wasn't registering, but besides that I had no issues!

The Zoomie mechanic is a great way to keep an objective on the board at all times even when there aren't many squirrels!  But the squirrels appropriately distract you from getting the treats when they come around.  Great game loop!  And great job!

Very clever!  I got a bit stuck on level 3, but every level made sense once you figured out the LOOPhole!

I would ask for more but I can't believe how many rules you came up with already...

I managed to get to space in about 4min 45s!

Love the ASCII interface and strangely hypnotizing drone that comes out of a healthy train ecosystem haha.  Was there a way to see how much money a click generates?

Great job!

"Hit me metal man, I can handle it!"  - not my computer

Fun production value but couldn't really figure out how to get out of the starting area unfortunately. My guess is that I needed to punch something to launch myself up the wall? But my screen froze when I did this and I died :(

Was it intentional to put the beat timer on the off beats? I ended up tapping the beat out on my desk and letting my other hand do the off beats on the keyboard :P

I also managed to get double credit per beat by tapping twice quickly around the right time!

But alas, I still failed to satisfy the final... somewhat unreasonable request.  Sometimes your boss just wants to fire you haha

I came to find out what a bezier curve was, and can now confidently say that I'm not entirely sure how bezier curves work, and that I am very bad at manipulating bezier curves. 😁

I had some trouble with trying to drag the curvature to be more extreme, then leaving the screen with my mouse, which wouldn't continue controlling the curve if I re-entered the screen.  Trying to position the nodes in a way that I could drag them was an extra level of thinking that was a little distracting.

Fun little game concept, though! I like the swimming animation.  Good work!

What a fun idea!  I think building a little army of past-me's is really cool.  I'm sure there would be lots of strategies to explore in how to not necessarily beat the first wave as fast as possible, but set up your army to beat future waves as fast as possible.

It doesn't seem like my ghost was able to shoot anything though, unfortunately.  I saw his bullets going through the enemies I thought would be dealt with already on the second round.  I was also a little sad when I forgot to pick up my gigantic stack of coins from my well at the end of the round, and then wasn't able to buy an upgrade for the next round :(  Maybe half of the coins could be collected automatically?  I almost wanted to leave a clone in the well to be a banker for later rounds :)

Good work, despite some bugs!  (It was only 4 days, after all!)

The level design is super clean and taught me the mechanics effectively.  The levels just get better and better!  I had to stop and think for each one, and it was satisfying to make a plan and execute it!  I liked seeing a vertical loop section in the last level and immediately understanding what would happen there without needing to reach it yet.

I also appreciate the clever diagonal corners in some of the rooms, probably to avoid boxes getting stuck there.  It was almost like a tiny hint that I'd need to push the box off in that direction.

I feel all warmed up and ready to dive into more of these puzzles--so sad that it was already over, but excellent work!

Thank you for playing, and congrats on solving all of the puzzles!  The last few get pretty tricky.  Which puzzle was your favorite?