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I beat the game in about an hour, before ever even Ascending, so I definitely don't think progress is too slow! I never really looked at the logs on the side of the screen, other than when I wanted to see how much money I was making per Let Pass. There was too much scrolling by there for me to really read it. My thoughts on upgrades, from worst to best:

Composed Smile: Even before any upgrades at all, the 10 patience cost of Let Pass is completely regenerated before it comes back off cooldown. So, making that cost less patience doesn't really mean anything. Maybe if the Let Pass automation still had the patience cost, I could see needing this upgrade. For example, automatically letting 10 people pass at 10 patience each would instantly empty your 100 patience pool. In that case, lowering that cost to only 5 or 2 would cut that cost to 50 or 20, instead. But with the automations (seemingly?) costing no resources, there isn't a reason to buy any levels in this.

Tasty Snacks: I never used this skill because I was always full on patience, so the upgrade for it isn't useful. Also, you can increase this past the 100 cap of your patience pool. Unless there is a way to raise my max patience past 100, and something that uses the patience resource, I don't need food that restores 150+ patience.

Inner Peace: Like I said, I didn't need this to begin with, and after only 5 levels in Inner Peace I had enough patience being generated per second that it made all patience costs and rewards from actions and events completely meaningless. So, not really useful unless the Patience mechanic gets updated

Bargain Briber: This is useful in the beginning, where $20 to skip 3 people isn't worth it. The people behind cut the line so frequently that you won't keep those 3 spaces, and at only $5 profit per time you Let Pass, you can only make back $15 at most. Lowering that cost at least makes it slightly profitable. But I didn't end up even using the Bribe skill until late game, when I upgraded it to let me skip a bunch of people, thus making the skill actually useful. However, by that point, the original $20 cost was trivial when I was making $65 per person I Let Pass. So overall, possibly useful in the beginning, but not by the time you actually would use the skill.

Quicker Step: This actually felt pretty balanced. I had to put a bunch of money into it to get the cooldown to half, which is on point for an idle game. However, by the time I had the money to do this, I was not using the manual skip skill anymore (auto instead), so I didn't need the upgrade.

Passive Income: This one is a fun skill to buy thematically, since it makes you feel good for having passive income. But even at level 30, I was making significantly more from my automation, as you'll see below.

Greasy Palm: This is a main upgrade for this game. Being able to skip 10, 20, 50, or (eventually for me) 100 people instead of just 3? Super useful! When I wanted to beat the game, I pumped this up to level 50 and got the Bribe automation to level 5. I was passing more people than the animation could keep up with!

Tip Jar: The REAL main upgrade for this game. I upgraded this every chance I got, eventually stopping at level 100. This skill is why I was able to buy the higher level and more expensive automation upgrades. Definitely a great upgrade. I used the Greasy Palm skill to bribe past a TON of people, then used automation to let 10 of them pass every 5 seconds, at $300 each, for $3K every 5 seconds.

Ultimately, many of these are made less impactful because your generation of money/patience scales so high so fast. If you change how patience works, it'll change everything. But I'm not a game designer, I just play a lot of idle games! So, feel free to ignore me and follow your creative vision! Good luck!

Pretty great for such a simple idea!

For feedback: The automations need to be able to be toggled on/off, instead of being permanently active. If there is a way, I couldn't find it.

Also, Patience wasn't ever a real gameplay mechanic in its current form. It regenerated on it's own faster than I could use it, and the Inner Peace upgrade was so cheap that a few levels made it something I could completely ignore. It needs to be rebalanced so it feels impactful. Maybe something that consumes that resource, like making the automations have a Patience/second cost that increases per level. That would make a loop where if I want to have better automations, I need to increase my patience generation. You could also have the line environment have a patience cost per second. For example, a weather mechanic that makes it cost +/- Patience per second to stand in line based on how hot/cold/rainy/nice it is. And maybe even things I can spend money on to resist those changes, like umbrellas and jackets.

Anyway, great first game! Keep up the good work!

I beat the demo, and it's a great game, with lots of potential! A few things I noticed.

First, a bug. The range on the magnet, at least at max level, is significantly shorter than the circle indicates. As you can see in my screenshot, the shards on the bottom middle are well inside the ring, but not being sucked in.

Second, it gets extremely grindy near the end, with basically nothing I can do other than leave the game running to try and get the last sensor upgrade, and the last 3-4 of each type of mainframe booster. Hopefully, the full game has more upgrades to increase the generation speed of each resource.

Finally, it would be nice to see additional upgrades after "Technology" on the left, and maybe more types of reactor upgrades, too.

I got all the upgrades, evolved my void twice, and got all the skills that weren't grayed out. Then I prestiged.

1) I don't know what prestiging did for me?

2) Prestiging reset all my upgrades EXCEPT automation. Those were still maxed out.

3) I could not start the Gravity Discipline challenge. Pressing the button would reset my upgrades (except automation) and leave my money the same, but nothing else would happen, and no challenge I could tell. I got to the $75,000 goal, and still nothing happened. I tried this multiple times.

I've completely beaten the demo, and I have some thoughts on the mechanics. I’m sharing this in the spirit of constructive criticism to help improve the new player experience, so please don't take it personally!

First, and most importantly, the game needs more explanations. Currently, there aren't tooltips or tutorials for the base mechanics, which makes it hard to know what to upgrade. I found myself asking: What are bad sectors? How/when are they fixed? Do they give bonus points? Do unmovable sectors have a penalty? Is there a benefit to finishing a round, finishing faster, or finishing more lines? This lack of clarity is the recurring theme of my feedback.

Here are my notes for each upgrade:

Read Head Speed: A flat 20% faster point gain speed. This is a solid, clear upgrade.

Write Buffer: I wasn't sure what this upgrade was doing. I put points into it but didn't see any changes in the gameplay. Even when my read speed was nearly 3x my write speed, the write speed didn't seem to lag behind; it was always perfectly matched. Because I couldn't see the bottleneck or improvement, I couldn't see the reason to upgrade this. It might need a UI element to show the player why they need it.

Bad Cluster Detection: I’m a bit confused on the math here. The upgrade says "Automatically detect and fix bad clusters," but I wasn't sure what 8% or 16% meant in this context. Does it reduce the total amount of bad clusters? If so, am I losing out on potential bonus points? Or does it mean there is a 16% chance to auto-fix them? If so, are bad clusters worth significantly more than normal clusters? Without knowing the value of a bad cluster, it’s hard to justify the cost of this upgrade. I think clarifying the math here would help a lot.

Unmovable File Handler: I had a hard time finding the value in this one. It costs a lot of points to remove unmovable files, but since the "Read Head" seems to skip over them anyway, they didn't feel like a problem. Unless they are actively penalizing the score, replacing them with normal 1-point sectors doesn't feel like it justifies the upgrade cost. Is this purely cosmetic, or is there a mechanic here I’m missing?

Batch Optimizer: A nice multiplier to Read Head Speed. Another good, clear upgrade.

Cluster Expander: I was puzzled by this one. It adds 5 more rows, which makes the round take longer to complete. In an idle game, I usually want rounds to be faster. Is there a bonus for finishing more rows in a round? If this increased the base point reward of each sector, that would be a great benefit. But right now, without a clear reward for the longer round, it feels like a penalty rather than an upgrade.

Bad Sector Prioritizer: This concept has potential, but it feels risky to buy right now because the base mechanics aren't explained. It acts as a "crit chance" for bad sectors, but I don't know the base value of a bad sector. For example, at level 3, I have a 24% chance to get bonus points. But if the bonus is just one extra point, it doesn't feel worth the cost. Also, does this trigger every time I hit a bad sector, or only when I "fix" one using the previous Bad Cluster Detection upgrade? I feel like this would be much more satisfying if it was a flat crit chance for all sectors.

Sector Recovery Protocol: A crit multiplier to go with the upgrade above. This would be great, provided the logic on the Prioritizer upgrade is clarified.

Bad Sector Bypass: The description says this "Reduces bad sector processing slot cost." I got very lost here because I don't know what a "processing slot" is, or what they cost. Is there a hidden resource I'm spending? Since the only visible resource is defrag points, I wasn't sure if this was saving me money or time. Defining "Processing Slot" in the UI would fix this confusion immediately.

Now, here's how I would improve things. Keep in mind, I didn't have enough explanation for some of the mechanics to fully understand their purpose, so take this with a grain of salt:

1) Get rid of Write Buffer, and combine it with read speed. Alternatively, you could split the read and write speeds, and make the bottleneck clear to the player. This risks seeming like a lazy way to get the player to spend more upgrade points, though, so it would have to be handled carefully.

2) Make bad clusters worth 100x the base value of a normal file, IF you can fix them. Make it super clear if you fix them that you're getting bonus points and why, and leave them as “B” in red on the screen if you fail to fix them. Bad Cluster Detection will improve your chances of fixing them.

3) Add a speed bonus for completing a defrag, multiplied by the percentage fragmented at the end. Unmovable Files and unfixed Bad Sectors would count against this total, lowering your bonus. That would encourage the player to buy speed upgrades, while making the Unmovable File Handler upgrade basically a flat increase to your end of round bonus.

4) The Cluster Expander upgrade should increase the base value of each file. They're worth more, but now there are more lines which lower your completion speed, lowering your end of round bonus. This forces the player to invest in more speed again.

5) Bad Sector Prioritizer should just be a flat crit chance for every single sector, instead of just bad sectors. Possibly with a lower percentage each time (2% or 4%). This would make Sector Recovery Protocol more valuable, as well.

6) And completely get rid of that Bad Sector Bypass upgrade. Maybe put it in some later version of the game with multiple operating systems, that have additional resources you have to manage. But not here.

Good game. Got every upgrade, beat the king, completed every quest. Even got a few legendaries. Some improvements I see: 

1)Making item sets more prominent. It took me 30 minutes after equipping all the gold armor to even notice they had a set bonus, or that set bonuses existed at all. Lean into set bonuses. More of them. Maybe have the items show what their other set items are, or have a third tab on that screen for discovering sets, maybe with hints. It can make finding and equipping all the set bonuses another long term goal for completionists, and give your game more play time. 

2) Auto-Recycle. Similar to auto combine on pickup, I should be able to mark specific items I don't want for auto recycling on pickup, so they don't clog up the inventory. It can be a separate upgrade. 

3) Full Screen Pickup. I agree with people saying there should be a late game upgrade that automatically picks up everything as soon as it drops, without having to mouse over it. The logic for this is for end game users grinding for the last quests or item upgrades. I'm not actively playing the game anymore at this point, I'm leaving the cursor in the middle of the screen until the round ends. Having to mouse over everything (as an end game player) is just leaving lots of items on the ground, not picked up, so I have to play more rounds to get the ones I missed. Sure, this pads play time, but in the bad way that isn't fun.

4) Recycle balancing. Currently, you're penalized for using the auto combine feature when recycling. For hitting the next level in your inventory, you get 1 item recycled for Common, 2 for Uncommon, 3 for Rare, 4 for Epic, and (I assume) 5 for Legendary. But the number of items it took to make those are: Common - 1, Uncommon - 3, Rare - 9, Epic - 27, Legendary - 81. So you're missing out on 6 points by recycling a rare. Heaven forbid you ever recycle something higher rarity than that. This ignores uncommon and rare drops, and the fact that auto-combining frees up inventory space for more items, thus the need to balance. As it stands now, turning auto-combine on gets you less leveling points than leaving it off.

You need to make the upgrades and gold permanent. Resetting everything back to zero every time you die makes this game nearly unplayable. And after that, you need to let us spend our money after a round, before starting the next. Or pause to upgrade. Trying to read and select upgrades while trying to dodge mobs is terrible. Also, enable auto-shoot or click to shoot.

And now I'm going to rant, because this legitimately upset me. Change your screenshots. Unless there's some form of meta progression I'm missing, those screenshots you posted are total lies. Let's ignore the INSANE firerate at 39 seconds. How did you have 743 gold at 64 seconds?! That's 11.6 gold per second, from the start of the round. That's over TRIPLE the 9 per 2.76 seconds your screenshot shows. And that's not even including the cost to get all but one upgrade to level 3! Literally, the only way you did this was by cheating with some form of dev console, or by playing a version of the game where gold and upgrades persist between runs. 

It's definitely a good start! If you're looking for suggestions though, here's one. The routing of the trucks can be improved. Currently, a trash is only assigned a truck for pickup if the trash is full when the truck spawns from the distribution center. So, the further along the route it is, the less frequently it gets picked up. For example: at endgame with a full 10 trucks over 10 pickups, the first trash gets picked up every 15.6 seconds on average, for a value of $3.2/sec. The last trash gets picked up on average every 39.2 seconds, for a value of $19.1/sec. The last trash will sit full while many empty trucks pass by.

I suggest an upgrade called "Better Routes" or something that changes how trash is assigned a pickup truck. Instead of being assigned the next spawned truck when it becomes full, it can be assigned the closest truck with space, that has not already passed. This will give a boost to the value per second of all trash, with the last trash getting the biggest boost of over 55% more value. (55% is a guesstimate based on the time from one pickup, to the next empty truck passing by while it is full again.)