Nice jam game, I had fun.
I think the most significant balancing problem is: feeding the hole doesn't boost the digging / gold gathering in any way. This makes the game loop feel somewhat broken.
The numbers totally inflated after getting the multiply unit. Numbers could easily get to 1e20 and above. I think this is intended since this is a jam game.
Phase 2 progression is too slow, there's too much waiting before the investment starts generating returns.
I suggest making the cargo drone cheaper but with less capacity. Add an option to send PM to settlements to kickstart their production, and allow retreiving resources before all planets are extracted.
In early phase 2, carbon is the only useful resource to be gained from settlements. I think it would be good to have a cargo ship fetch only carbon and not waste its precious logistical capacity on other resources.
Right now each settlement can only have 1 cargo ship assigned. I think this is an unnecessary restriction. When set to production mode, the settlement should request a cargo ship as soon as it has enough resources for a full shipment.
This definition is too trivial and vague that it doesn't capture any useful notion of incremental.
IMO the core aspect of incremental games is incremental accumulation of resources. The whole game is centered around accumulating such resources, using them to overcome challenges, and accumulating more of them. These resources are usually persistent, but exchanging some of them for another type (like prestiging) is also possible.
In contrast, a puzzle game is trying to solve a problem within clear boundaries. In this game, when trying to beat the final boss, there's a clear boundary: time limit and batteries avaliable.
Really enjoyed the game! It has vibes similar to The Perfect Tower, which is also a really good game.
Some suggestions: Many of the workshop upgrades have too little effect per level and many levels, thus requiring many many clicks. I suggest adding a bulk buy option: Spend x% of currency on the upgrade. X could be configured with an input box, or just use predetermined numbers (10%,25% and 100%).
Mastery upgrades are somewhat confusing at first, though they are easy to understand after more unlocks. I suggest showing the unlock condition for each upgrade, and add respec option (because it's a continuation of talent tree).
When dragging the game speed slider, the game sometimes reads the input wrong and the hero starts moving towards top-right corner.
I suggest showing the base HP and attack of enemies for the current wave, so that I can make more informed decisions.
Played halfway through the demo and had fun. Wishlisted and decided to wait for full game.
Some thoughts:
1. There are horizontal lines in the graphic. I don't really like this visual effect, will there be a way to disbale this?
2. There's no way to demolished buildings. However, since the game is based on relatively short runs, a mistake won't have long lasting effects. I think this is interesting.
3. It seems every building I build will exponentially increase the price of all buildings. This is an interesting design choice, I wonder why you chose it over the traditional "every building exponentially increase the price of the same type of building".
I think the current mechanism encourages not having less effective buildings, and put all into the most effective building. The 'traditional' apporach will encourage having a diversity of buildings, but it will also degrade into just buy whatever you can afford.
Anyway, I suggest adding some nodes in the reputation tree to reduce the price growth.
4. Wooden baskets are too weak. Each amber is worth 3, each basket takes 2x as much work to craft and is worth 5. The ship cargo space is not scarce enough for this to be worth it. Furthermore, there're multiple boosts which increase amber worth to 6 (artifact +1, tree +50%) which makes them directly worth more than baskets.
I started a fresh save and noticed a few more upgrades with their actual effect not matching the tooltip.
Mining speed: says +30%, actually +50%.
Smelting speed: L1 says +100%, actually +50%.
L2 says +500%, actually +200%.
L3 says +20k%, actually +500%.
L4 says 80k%, actually 800%.
L5 says 4m%, actually 10000%.
Max energy looks somewhat weird too. It seems to have more actual effect than shown instead.
Some other feedback: I saw RGB split visual effect in this game. It looks cool, but it's not eye friendly. I suggest add a toggle to disable it.
Balancing: Increasing depth increases resource gain by 3x but block hp by 5x, which means I can only get 0.6x resources overall. I feel it's only useful when I run out of blocks to dig in lower depth, and when that happens, it's more penalizing than rewarding.
I suggest change it to the other way around: Make resource gain mult grow faster than hp mult, like 8x vs 5x. This way it's rewarding for the player to unlock new depths.
Interesting nodebuster-like game.
The pacing is okay. I think it may be a bit too slow, especially the starting part. I think the price of early levels of upgrades should be lowered a bit so that the player can afford a new upgrade every run.
Many other nodebuster-like games have difficulty levels. If you go far enough in a run, you can beat a boss that drops special currency, and increase the difficulty level. Increasing difficulty level makes runs more difficult but also rewards more resource to buy more upgrades.
IMO bosses doesn't fit this game, but having difficulty level is ok. I'm not sure what effects it should have though.
The quest system feels out of place. I suggest removing them altogether, and maybe replace them with difficulty level system instead.
There's an oddball upgrade: increase the max number of collectors to buy. I think it's out of place too. I think it should be changed to give extra collectors directly, so buying it is immediately useful, not requiring further spending into collector count upgrades.
Feature request: allow the player to move around in the upgrade tree. Currently there is only zooming but not moving around.
I suggest adding different types of collectors. They can collect with special effects: Collect in an AOE, scoop-like collection, bonus mushroom spawn on collect, bonus currency gain but spawn no mushroom, etc.
The AI of existing collectors may need tweaking: They currently go to random mushroom. I think they should go nearest instead.
Overall I think this game is quite novel. It needs more content and polish, and is worth working on.
I upgraded super magnet and found out I'm no longer able to extract uranium. I'm softlocked. I think selling the pit may solve this, but I really don't want to sell it because there's not much gold to gain.
I suggest chaging the mechanism of super magnet so that upgrading no longer locks out of uranium extractions.
I wonder how much does the factory heat affects the planetry environment.
When they consume electricity, they turn those energy into heat. At endgame we can have tens of Petawatts or even higher than that. This is as much as the total sun energy received by the planet, and should have an effect on the climate.
I suggest splitting options into a separate tab, and put all the options there. It will help a lot when future options get added like export/import.
Another suggestion: Certain numbers like number of bought buildings and upgrades should not ne formated into like 1.05k or 1.05e3, I want to read them with integer precision. Please format them in commas(like 1,050), or simply print the number without format.
Cost of automation upgrade on mars is certainly too high. It costs 20k Al to unlock, but actually buying it requires 4k Fe and 1k Mg, neither are attainable at this time. I've got to Hydrogen and still unable to afford this upgrade yet, and iron is becoming unbearably grindy without this.
I suggest make it cost something like 100 calcium.
Some side thoughts:
1. I have over 200 books! It's getting tedious to scrap them all, I want a way to bulk scrap them. Maybe make the books stackable?
By the way, I think some inventory sorting function could be useful, so things are in standard order and not change when I use up something and gain more later.
2. With about 100 maps explored, the selection screen is getting cluttered. Now I really want a way to delete old locations.
3. When exploring in the mines, I have an idea: When muffled, the character can use an action to make noise (like knocking the ground), so the centipedes are attracted together while I quietly move to another position, then I can use a single potion to kill a group of them.
4. About Verdant sandals:
This equipment is useless outside of setting forest fires. And even when I'm using it to prepare a forest fire, it's still inconvenient to use.
I think it should inherit the nettle protection from tall boots, as provided by verdant blessing.
If it needs to be buffed, then either give it better utility for preparing the fire, or give it some other utility.
For preparing the fire, it could either be buffed to grow tall grass in a larger range (3x3), or be able to overwrite non-flammable plants like spearmints and foxgloves.
For other utility, it could give hp recovery. Maybe heal 1 hp for every tile of tall grass planted. If that's too much, you can make it heal with a probability.
5. Roses hurt!
Currently rose deal 1 damage when passing through, and no equipment can block this damage. The pathfinder also doesn't try to avoid it. I think this needs to be fixed, either make tall boots block that damage, or make the pathfinder avoid it.
