Hi. I saw you post on reddit before it got taken down(it was because of rule 4 btw, tough luck) and decided to have a look at it.
First impressions - The graphics. You know it, I know it. When people see graphics like the ones in your game they'll most likely just scroll past it. If you want your game to be given the time of day you'll have to polish it up significantly. Here's my advice regarding that:
Itch.io asset store! its full of free/inexpensive assets you can use for your game
Lospec.com is a great site for learning and making pixel art - a medium perfect for starter games such as yours
Commissioning an artist (If you can afford it)
The start screen - Just after booting up the game i could see lots of room for improvement, heres some things i've taken note of that you should consider working on:
- cursor slows down when menus on the start screen are opened, otherwise normal
- options aren't available from the start screen
- cant exit the PDF guide without exiting the whole game
Playing the game - This is the point where i started taking notes on how it felt play the game
- keep on getting a message that my people are rebelling, i'm not sure what it means by saying that i'm not investing wealth into the people, no clue how im supposed to solve this
- got messages about there not being enough doctors, pretty straightforward how to solve this one, the quantity of messages bugged me a bit though
- scrolling through the building menus is really hard, when trying to use the scrollbar the edge scrolling drags you to the side, and when trying to use the scroll wheel on just the menu the whole screen zooms
- the game menu doesn't pause the game
- when saving the game it says “save and quit” it doesn't actually quit the game
- the game let me save a game with a blank name
- when i type into the saving screen the game camera moves
Navigation
- the wasd movement is very stiff feeling, can't move diagonally
- the edge scrolling and zooming could be a bit faster
- there should seriously be a limit to how big the map is, ended up getting lost and couldn't find the island again, maybe a button that homes in on the center of the island?
Other games - There's this game called The Wandering Village that i think you should take a look at, not to compare to your own game of course, that team has been at it for years and have way more resources than you. but i do think you should take note of its mechanics, and how they do those mechanics as well as they do. What I like about the Wandering Village is how easy it is to get a hang of it, when villagers are dying it's easy to find out why, and making them stop is the challenging part. If you want to keep making city builders I’d highly recommend really analyzing what city building games are as fun as they are.
Sorry if I'm being a bit harsh on you. But tell you this, no one’s first game is ever good. That's pretty much a fact among game devs. There's just no way around that. Your first ever game is always always bad. The good thing about that though is that you only make one first game, so no matter what you do your second game will always be an improvement. i can't guarantee that your second game will be good either though, or your third… or fourth. But it will always be an improvement. I sense you have a real passion for games, and I sincerely hope you read this comment as a positive one and keep making games. Don’t be too tough on yourself, there's still a long road ahead.