itch.io

Good game, hard to believe it runs on my toaster.

I would suggest a prestige upgrade that let you know each purchase requirements, even after a handful of run, it's unclear what trigger which unlock.

I would also suggest a vacuum upgrade for the maw. At some point the gold input is soft capped by the volume brought by each dwarf and spill right of it.

Great game, solid mechanics & UX, intriguing enough plot.

I like this kind of "pathfinding" puzzle.

I guess an editor to create our own  combined actions would be hard and overkill to implement. But a simpler "retrace your steps" could go a long way to smooth out loop starts.

Can we really cleanse every girl from the pitchblack lipstick ? it's hinted in multiple place but unless a strict path of dialog option is required, it doesn't seem possible.

Hi, you have a nice base here, simple and to the point. Here my feedbacks:

Couple UI fix IMO:

1. Make the Spd + button clickable, you point an arrow to it but it does nothing.
2. Make a different icon for the turrets upgrades page and the basic turret page. Kinda dumb from me, but I though I should've two basic turrets since there was two basic turret icons.
3. Also I am not sure about the layout of the upgrade page/tab icons. You have one "tab" for the wall upgrades and one "tab" for turrets upgrades, but every turrets then have a "page" for their upgrades. If you plan to have different kind of wall page upgrades, you should distinguish "tab" and "pages". Either group them like [ A | B ] [ 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 ] or separate them like [ A ][ B ] | [ 1 ][ 2 ][ 3 ][ 4 ][ 5 ]. If you don't plan to have wall page upgrades, you could just put them all at the same level and remove the distinction between wall & turrets: [ A ][ 1 ] [ 2 ][ 3 ][ 4 ][ 5 ].

About Gameplay:

• The "closest" and "random" target is nerfed by not reseting the target after each shot, if at some point the strongest enemy becomes the target it doesn't let go. I don't know if its by choice, but it removes some of the agenda players have.
• I think the Shotgun firerate shouldn't scale as fast as the Machin gun. Maybe it shouldn't even scale since pellet count is also a firerate upgrade in a way. You could replace it by effective range.
• In your game, wall upgrades are irrelevant because the best damage mitigation is simply to clean the field before enemies touch the wall. Whatever money spent in wall upgrade is money that doesn't progress the waves and that would be lost by any power creep. With enemies making only 1 damage, 20hp is already really forgiving and with 1 upgrade in repair, we fall in the dps race kind of defense, and the turret are wining. You could start with 1 hp and set one-of or fast capped upgrades like max +2 hp, max 1 Regen per wave, 1 screen clear per reset (or any damage buff mechanic), temporary immunity...

Gameplay additions:

1. One way tower defense idle games usually balances themselves
   is by letting the player upgrade the enemies. Like making them harder to kill but giving out more money. (they should be able to cancel them to not softlock themselves)
2. One way to nerf damage output is to makes it irrelevant from time to time. For instance by giving Hearthstone style "divine shield".
3. Your Spd+ meter is a good idea you could exploit on multiple axis: You could have upgrade for it, turret upgrades that only scale with it, or choice between different meters payoff (like an temporary overdrive that put the meter in cooldown)

I believe you have a difficult framework to work with here: Player agency is mostly comprised of upgrading firepower. And your leverage of balancing the game is enemies stats and costs. Meaning the balance is pure maths. Which won't really be fun for you nor for your players.

Of course maths are important in idle games, big numbers go big, one number goes many numbers. That's the juice.

Yes, you could start by making enemies a lot harder to kill or output enemies faster, since you don't really lose anything by dying except time. Unless you want a good player to "win" from a fresh save without reset.

But I think you should also find a couple other avenues for player agenda.  You could have double edged upgrades for enemies. You could dig deeper into the idea of idle runs for money gathering and active runs to reach higher waves. You could add walls or zones at different level of the screen with other effects and cooldowns. 

Good luck and congratulation.
 

But you are not bad at it: First because you made one, second because you've got people having fun

That means you are probably doing some things right :)

Thankfully the main plot can be done without requirements from the side content.

But some requirements are really strict and over-engineered, I feel like there is a lot of superflous flags to avoid dialog or event repetition and overall it make some pieces extra hard to reach.

I'll try to be constructive here so keep in mind that had fun, that I like your game and I can see there's a lot of work and I think everything there is a lack a technical quality, not a lack of artistic quality, nor a lack of ideas. It's a bold choice to make content missable but there's a balance to be found.

As developer myself, I'm used to think with black boxes with clear input and output, the more I/O there is to a black box, the harder it is to maintain. If I need to use something inside the box from the outside, that becomes an output and it needs to be obvious. I believe you can apply this to a lot of process, questlines included.

Looking at the maid quest:

• You need the Fairy core because "fairy are able to transition between world" at will I guess. But that kind of a false justification since you've read a book to do it while sleeping. On the over hand I don't see why a fairy (usually chaotic and free) would be related to a maid quest.
• You need specifically the 1% core but you could have the 25% if you've fetch the See the Hidden first. I guess it's an oversight, but it piles up with every other side effects that softlock the quest both you and the player need to track.
• I have found out you need some flag (пр.ядро М.Н.Ж - 0(123)4) equal to 4 related to your first core being filled up, but in my save where I overfilled it, it was set at 3. I don't know what's the reasoning behind it. If it's a bug, if it's on purpose, what it achieves in the context of the quest.
• You need to bear no weapon but the ring doesn't remove them.
• You need the fire spell i believe ? (missed the spell in one save and I couldn't light the fireplace, coudn't even interact with it, nor make tea I think, didn't check the code. Bug or not I lighted all torches with magic so it shouldn't be needed anyway for non-combat related fire magic)
• You need air ram for the spider webs ?
• You need the maid shoes despite having looked inside the drawer 20times because you weren't wearing the dress at the time.

Meaning: you can start the quest if you have the maid dress, but there is so many way to be softlocked out of completion without any obvious reasons.

(correct me if I am wrong, but there is other examples) was it clear the spells were hard requirements? Did you weight in they could be skipped and not remove anything from how the quest plays ?

When you made the quest about filling the core, was it clear that the variable пр.ядро М.Н.Ж - 0(123)4 was going to be used in other quests ?

Streamlining some requirements would help both the player and you keeping track of what's needed when and where.

On the dev side, being mindful of what is required and what will be reused later is important to be able to edit past content without breaking new developments

On the player side, using discreet flags makes it impenetrable and frustrating, sometimes it feel unfair.

I think it's frustrating to enter a quest, follow it for an hour (or more) and find out you couldn't finish it because you never had the requirements to begin with.

I get why there is missable content as time pass on the island (like the book for meditation), I get why there's missable content with wrong dialog choices (like removing the glued corset), I get why there's missable content during closed room events (Succubus lair, fairy tf).

But I don't really get why the princess room lever broke. Why you can't try again the dreamworld in the slime cave. Why you can't redo the hair growth dialog with martha, the dream with Helga. Why there's RNG on some TF, you can't re-read the note on the table about the pirates and merchant. Why the shoes aren't listed the drawer when you don't wear the dress. Why you can't trigger the witch event until you've actually cast raw mana bolt, despite having loads of mana (that one made me run in circles and it locks a LOT of content if you do it too late).

Open world interactions that are locked without finishing their quest line, because of some unfair fail state or dark triggers and not because of overworld events ? It doesn't make much sense. And unless rpg maker make these locks by default, it feels more tidous to create minor flags that you'll check only for that (And might be tempted to use in further content). It feels over-engineered, instead of well crafted.

I strongly believe sticking to referencing big flags between questlines, that are kind of clear to the player, that are kind of "on the nose" will make both the maintenance of your content easier and make it more enjoyable to navigate.

There's a world between Railroading and a well crafted web, but if you overthink things too much, you end up with tangled spaghetti.

That being said, I think most set piece events are are cool (the catacomb, succubus lair, princess room, the maid and mermaid when they work, it works), they have multiple big outcomes and rewards, and seeing the repercussion of those big outcome feels right. The TF flow is good, I mean at this point I just want to throw out deserved compliments to compensate this whole comment.

The main quest is good and original, I think the last part (once you've freed Elva to current end of content) could use some clarification, but everything before that point is clear.

But the side content is hard to reach, between the shacky english translation and missable requirements here and there. Most side content are linked and I don't know how I feel about that. For now it is alright to hit new game to complete some endgame content because you missed a blue rock in the first minute of the game, but it will grow less tolerable the further each content pieces are.

I spend two thirds of my time playing the game looking after the source code to understand what I was missing, when and where were the triggers. Now I know most of rpgmaker inner workings without ever using it.

I had fun tho.

It looks like you know what you are doing!
I don't know Yume Nikki, but I like puzzle and exploration for the sake of it, I just think story bits can be a good tool to nudge the player in the right direction.
I've played quite a lot more since then and I am starting to feel I've reach the end of content (some "fillers" items, not a lot puzzle-less pieces nor piece-less puzzles, not much closed door left to open).
You really did a great job weaving the three areas together and it feel rewarding to loop around one and the other to try to bring stuff and states around. There's this feeling of setting up an insane route and trying to unfold it like clock work.

I found a glitch when you use ether next to the red ghost and get possessed, it kept the collisions disabled and removed the ether "leash", with this I found a hidden area I don't think I would ever found.
Clay doll crashed the game because I've just passed through decontamination (-1 index error on hip size).
I am stuck with a purple face huger despite going though all sort of transformation removal. I still not sure if there's layers of transformations that need to be peeled one by one and I'm still not sure what or when some transformations are kept through the day.

I am definitely hitting New game on the next update, try to rework my way there way with my notes.

Hi,
before reading, I quote many games moments, which can be felt as spoil for some people (I would).
But there's no hint nor puzzle solution, so read at your own risk.

I really like the game, the style, theme and puzzle design.
So far none of the puzzle felt wrong or bs, when you don't know what to do with something it's because you didn't find the info, if you can't find the info, it's either somewhere or gatekept, if it's gatekept, it's probably for later.
Therefore, what I'm concerned about isn't clues, it's directions.
In point&clicks, you have puzzles that matter now but you don't know it, puzzles that will matter later, and the one puzzle to solve your current bottleneck, you find most puzzle pieces while looking for the one you need right now. When you find it you can unravel / dominos other intermediate puzzles, then choke on a new bottleneck with new zones to explores and still leftover puzzles from previous zones.
The issue here : I don't know what I am looking for. I am seeing probable solutions to problem I don't have.

The diary idea is a good addition but it fell short :
- At some point I had the Kari entry running alone in the lab. I found Kari once, and the entry was removed.
- I had the Yuri entry. Explored the mansion find quite few things (opened the steel door and the paint door). At some point the entry about Yuri disappeared but I don't think I ever found her (maybe it was because I had the school dream with her, which I cannot do again).
- Now my dairy says "..." and I'm blindy reaching around. I'm not hard stuck, just very slowly testing things left and right in the different dreams.
The game is very open and that a great thing. But without direction it's quite frustrating to repeat half of what I did the night before, reach a point I can try something new, wake up or softlocking my night, get by the day, and doing it again.  All without knowing I'm going toward the next thing and not following red herrings or doing things that won't matter before two to three hours later.
Maybe it's just the story implementation lagging behind the puzzles? Did I softlock my save? If it isn't, I am effectively directionless both in the waking world and in dreams. What if my MC is fine with their body and eating titshroom all night ? Did I win the game?
My biggest suggestion would be: keep using the diary to focus the player toward the next big "unlock". Maybe add intermediate entries.

other points:
- I believe at some point the games tell me I can "now hangout with Nanami and Kari", but Nanami says repeatedly that she'll only come up for the coffeeshop. I can't find her anywhere in the afternoon so I guess I misremembered ?
- - At some point Kari must investigate Nanami and find money solution to buy the ... thing for Rin. Did the story lines up for the coffeeshop scene to solve both point or did my game "eat" a scene ? I've worked there a handful of evenings but nothing happened beside stats changes.
- When Rin explain "like in a video game" how the white bar works at night, I can't remember if she explained a way to extend the dream. I ate all my bathroom pills in the waking world trying to figure out what they'll do. I only deducted from Yuri those were in fact sleeping pills. Maybe rename them "Sleeping pills" ?
- The orange "Card lv3" doesn't open the red 3 door. Isn't it just a Card lv2 ?
- There's timing limitations around using the computer, is that really necessary ? Sometime I cannot use the computer before night, but reading the diary and saving are things I would especially do before night.
- Objects descriptions are usually a staple in point&clicks, but so far you've managed without it. For me it's like platformers without "press A to pass through platforms", the bests manage without it and It's kind of a double edge sword anyway. Slow clap.
- I can't process waking world meat or eggs into protein shake, despite it not having to be complex and now I'm scared they'll mince me instead ;)
- (though "mince you instead" would reference their cold colleague's hand, but you cannot "shake" that hand either)

- Loved the Doom movie reference :D

Really nice work!
There's one detail that hinder the experience: buttons don't extend to the frame there in and only the text is clickable. They are kinda small already but they are even smaller than they look.
I'm not proficient in python/renpy, therefore I don't know what you're working with, I tried doing something like and seems to fix the issue for the sell all button of the cargo:

Nothing that can't be fix with a big find & replace

Good luck and Happy holidays!