itch.io

Well, it certainly is early access. I hate to tear you apart, because I really do feel for your trials and want to support the cause you are trying to support. Please understand that this is a critique of your work, not of you. I hope this finds you doing well.

Let me say this: This is a game. Games should be valuable by themselves, either as entertainment, as art, or as a challenge, and a noble cause such as spreading awareness isn't going to cut it. Log some hours, as it stands now, is none of those things. It's simple, it's got a nice tune, but there's no creativity, no challenge, and it doesn't look good. 

The tasks are extremely limited and mundane, and the only goal in the game seems to be building everything. The character and different wood sprites are painful to look at, the movement system is grating, and I very quickly lost the desire to explore or try to progress, because I could sense that it was just a big grind with minimal reward beside populating the map one by one, all by my lonesome.

My first recommendation is to figure out what the player's end goal should be. I should feel like I have something to work towards, maybe multiple things to work towards. Until I see this, I have trouble reconciling supporting this project financially. I can't support a game I don't expect to enjoy.

My other advice don't fall into the trap of adding functions just because other games have them. Make the game your own by thinking through what process your target audience wants to achieve their goal. More content doesn't necessarily mean more fun. Game mechanics should further my progress or add something to the game, not hinder my progress. If I can see the tree I want to get to, but I have to solve a puzzle first, it usually only serves to frustrate me. Let the reward be a mystery, and it actually be something unique, not just another resource to build houses out of.

There's so many more things I could pick out, but this is more than enough. You've got a good start to a game, you've got mechanics that work and a rough idea of what you want to do, so keep at it. I hope this critique doesn't give you the feeling of having to start all over; you have something good! But it's nothing worth publishing to the world. The world only cares about itself. If you need help working on this game and achieving your goals, talk it over with someone who cares about you. They will support you far more than the casual user on itch or kickstarter.

It seems that it's been a month since you've shared any updates on this. Are you giving up?

Looks cool! I'm excited to try it!

Loved it! I will say, it took me a while to figure out that the sword beam had to reach the ground in order for me to go farther. The 4th weapon's special exploding one at a time also wasn't clear at first; my first experiment with the weapon was all three bombs together, and afterwards I assumed that they would all go off at the same time. Finally, I also found that some of the last puzzles with buttons were quite difficult; it took a bit of experimenting to figure out which buttons did what, especially the final button, as it was a good distance from the object it affected. 

I found the game to be a lot of fun! It took me 55 minutes to complete. I explored a little bit at the end and enjoyed jumping off the map and finding those two easter eggs in the corners. Thanks for a fun game!

Found something: crabs can be led to fly inside the shop by being on the far left when they go left, and are lined up with the shop.

It's been a long time since I've been here, and I was ecstatic to see you had made Salvagette! I have played it a LOT already. Almost as much as Salvage. And I have to say, you did a fantastic job with this one. Completely beautiful. I love the new enemies (I was honored to see my enemy concept included!!!), new powerups, I love all the music, replay button, new graphics, I can’t even list how many things I'm enthused about! I've played it for ~10 hours and will probably keep coming back for more. My best is 65 days, maybe I should try for 100? Does the difficulty ever stop increasing?

I got all the endings. I was surprised by how much easier you made it to get Republic of Virtue. I was so proud to get it on Salvage because back then I wasn't even sure if I had the right idea, and then I was crazy enough to try it and it was really hard. The new upgrades made getting The Republic of Virtue much easier, and honestly, a little bit of a let-down for me. However, getting consummate survivor was something that I did in Salvage to test my limits and it has remained the most difficult challenge of all. I'm glad to have that.

I'd love to share the few things I've noticed. Good news, the list is shorter and less serious this time! 

1. I've gotten all the secret endings, but on my stats screen, I see incorruptable on there twice, bringing the list count up to 8. Not sure what I did to cause that.

2. I want to know what the teleporting enemy's name is! Being killed by one will show on both the death screen and stats screen that you were killed by a Thopter.

3. There's a small invisible box on the main screen on the middle right from "tte" to the end. It just makes a little beep when you hover over it.

4. Viewing the key in the shop after purchasing, it has the lvl 2 tag on it even though it's sold out. I wondered if I had to have the key still to upgrade it, so I tried getting another $7 and going back without unlocking the gate just to see. It would be cool if I could unlock a secret room... filled with watchers?????

Anyways, I loved playing your game again for another new experience! It's such a cool and unique game, I keep wishing for more. I'm in agreement that an enemy catalogue would be cool, although just an encounter seems too easy for an entry. Maybe collecting enough parts of them to reassemble one? ...are they organic or mechanic? 

I also am such a sucker for easter eggs! Finding the secret endings and discovering how each elite enemy behaved was sooo cool. I keep trying things to see if there's any hidden gem for playing enough days or doing something unique. This game would be prime for an easter egg, some developer gem hidden somewhere most players would never find. 

Thank you so much for another good time! Are you planning on letting the concept end with this game? It seems like it's pretty much done with, although I hate to see it get dropped with how little popularity it has. Can I ask what your favorite game to produce has been?

Sound does seem to be better, thanks! Keep it up

Additionally, I often don’t care about SFX options, but this is a case where I would like to either adjust the sound effects or just turn them off. They are pretty loud compared to the music 

Yes yes yes yes yes

Idk bout multiplayer tho... teaming up would be nice but turn based multiplayer is all too often a big pain

Also I was just brainstorming around and I totally thought up an enemy that I would really like to see added. Shall I describe it?

Basically it spawns on the wall and does the usual charging up blue circle thing. When it attacks, it launches ITSELF at the player/decoy and can be destroyed like any normal enemy.  Here’s the catch: it carries a ball chained behind it. That’s the thing that does damage. Avoid them while they’re flying, eliminate while they’re down. Once they contact a wall, floor, ceiling, they stick to it and recharge. 

Did I ramble too long? XD 

Anyways please ask me for anything if there’s anything I can do to help you release the next game/update!!!

Since drones and lurkers tend to go left and then down depending on where the player is, you can use that to make them decide to crash into the wall. If that doesn’t make sense, I can upload a vid to YouTube. I’m pretty surprised this glitch isn’t intentional! It seemed like a pretty cool Easter egg and a strategy that is hard to implement but still possible to use. I assumed that if it weren’t intentional, the enemies would just go out of bounds...

Also, the activation window for bullets might be a bit too large for your liking, since I have used it more than once to plow through large hordes of enemies without taking damage. If I were you, I would make it so that if the bullet is overlapping with an enemy or the bullets mother enemy, then it does not deal damage. For the most case, however, the way you programmed the game makes bullets entirely predictable.  The only exception is when I get surprised by my own decoy and accidentally move into the bullets...

So far I have found:

Entering the tutorial and then going back to the main screen will always bring up the option to resume current game. This brings up three different results depending on what ending you got last: getting a death ending will play the game in real time speed with living enemies aiming at the position where you died. Getting an ending where you go through the gate will simply let you pick up where you left off, and getting an ending where you destroy the shop plays the game in real time and makes you invulnerable, as well as making it impossible to get to the next round. 

Unlocking the gate and entering the tutorial opens up an invisible space where the gate would be. 

The times where being close to an enemy seems to make bullets work less often? I haven’t exactly figured out what causes them to not deal damage but I can do it pretty consistently

Also, did you purposely program drones and lurkers to be able to crash into walls, making them commit suicide?

I don’t know which glitches you’ve noticed, but I have a small list of things that I’ve discovered if you want to hear about them.