Pretty good! At first I thought this would be a ripoff of that pinata incremental (which, granted, I'm not aware if that's copying something else), but I think you've really put your own spin on the concept. More ways to deal damage would be good, as well as upgrades suppressing the flesh duplication rate.
It looks like there's still not enough here to be an enjoyable game just yet. - You can start automation but can't improve it - The automation is staggered based on when you started them so everything goes off-sync, making it less efficient since they're only producing squares under certain conditions - You can waste your currency by pressing the arrows repeatedly - A display bug regarding the currency UI when moving between colors (in my case, it showed I had 1 green currency when I really had zero)
You're right! This isn't a good game. No indication as to what to click / what can be clicked, squares disappearing from the progress bar and from beside the arrows without any indication as to why. I realized it was fully automatic so I tabbed out and let it run for a while, later coming back to... the main menu.
Even with the tree panned to the very top of the screen, the limits make it hard to see the price. I just tried it again, and it looks like it's because I had the browser zoomed out to 80% so the itch.io links don't overlap with the game window. At 100% zoom it's ok
The price on the tooltips for the plinko slot upgrades goes offscreen and can't be seen. Zooming out doesn't help, because the tree gets centered on the screen.
Pretty good! The Gravigun seems ideal for the early game thanks to its fire rate and slight seeking. The major barriers to progress are the 5000 rifle kills and 500 heals milestones
The boss battle is a HUGE jump in difficulty, especially when all the cells, flying orbs, and trails make it difficult to see the boss' projectiles, and just colliding with a few of them can knock off most of your remaining time. Even with all upgrades purchased it feels like it's down to luck.
There are some strange design choices that make it a bit frustrating even in the early game, including: - RNG-based progression where you could a long time mining and not discovering new species, or getting close to uncovering them only to run out of energy - Dramatic "presentation" for the species that have already been discovered, slowing down the flow of gameplay - No way to quickly replay after the level end screen; you HAVE to go to the dex / home - No indication of how many fossils are in the current mine (total and remaining); especially egregious since this is clearly inspired by Pokemon / Pokeclicker
How are you supposed to leave Auto Fishing enabled while you take care of stuff on other screens if: 1. It cancels every time the bird moves 2. You have to click on the arrow labels to go to other screens 3. Clicking on labels moves the bird
I tried it again and I think I got confused between "Crystals earned this round" and "Total crystals the player has" in the results screen at the end of the round. I'd recommend removing the "total" readout from the results screen, since the player doesn't need this info outside of the upgrade tree.
Apologies if I sounded frustrated in my original comment.
The amount of crystals the player has is set to zero every time you start a level, so only your most recent run has any effect on your ability to buy upgrades. This can make it hard to afford upgrades, especially when you have all 5 types of minerals on the board. Also, what's the point of the passive crystal gain talents if your crystals are just going to reset?
Seems quite barebones. No way to know what bugs can be found in which expedition, speed up the gacha process, or improve luck. Can't tell what effect equipping bugs has on income. Even in your screenshots Item and Trade are locked so I assume it's not implemented yet? The massive jump in expedition prices ($10 - $1M) makes me want to give up.
I guess I somehow convinced myself the game would end at 1 billion dollars, so I was surprised it ended when it did. Just as well, because waiting for $1b would take a long time. Short but fun!
Definitely needs some upgrades to make the fishing minigame easier, like reduced variation in the fish's movement, bigger green area, and less time needed for the fish to be in the green area.
I have a few more notes now that I played it again: if you decide to make post-jam updates, consider allowing the player to HOLD the mouse button to fire. Also I'm not 100% sure if you can get hurt by the plus symbol animation when enemies spawn in but it felt like that to me.
The movement top speed is a little too high, which might be part of the challenge, but when I'm trying to navigate through 50 enemies and projectiles that are the exact same color as the player sprite, the lack of precision can get a little frustrating.
REALLY needs the ability to skip to the end of the sentence / dialog entry if you press E while it's still coming in letter by letter, especially since the starting town NPC dialog seems to be mostly fluff
You just need to be careful with your usage of your thrusters and shockwave and you should be able to get the fake ship all the way across, drama queen.
For the anti-luck, you have to clarify that it's an overall speed bonus, because when I read the description, it made me think I was going to be worse off compared to before I bought the upgrade, by being lucky.
Ah, then this is something you must make clear to the player, because up until the 2nd run it just looks like a shooter with Arkanoid elements and purchasable upgrades.
While I appreciate you're bringing your own flavor and uniqueness to the genre, you should make sure players aren't caught off guard because they're expecting a conventional roguelite experience.
Maybe add a "refund upgrades" option so players with poor builds (like me because I was surprised by the adaptive difficulty) don't have to wipe their save?
Are you making the enemies stronger based on how many upgrades the player has purchased? If so, that makes it harder and harder to earn money and kind of takes the fun out of it, especially when the upgrades (except for damage) tend to be very small improvements (+0.02 per upgrade when the starting fire rate is 0.5, +1% chance per upgrade for the special bullets). It would be like indiscriminately jacking up prices based on how many times a player has prestiged, in a traditional incremental
Not bad! I thought I'd get Salvage really slowly but after upgrading the drop chance it became a non-issue. With enough upgrades it's possible to beat the simulation with the beginner ship and ability. Currently grinding Salvage to unlock the rest of them.
My only peeve is that there are so many passive skills that it's hard to get the one you want right away, but I guess the player can just choose more "Passive Skill" zones or use the shop.
Do you intend to get different sprites for your player characters and enemies? Not to accuse you of anything, but they kind of have that typical AI-generated image look. It could turn people away from the game.
Hard agree with agitodev. Text getting obscured by the character sprite on the textboxes is particularly frustrating when trying to figure out how to play.
Why are the items in the equipment slots blinking in and out?
Holding (not dragging) right click to pan around the upgrade tree is very counterintuitive.
What's with the weird numbers in the skill tree? +0.0193% Efficiency? x0.00274 Attack?
In the nicest way possible, I feel like this game is doing a lot of things to try and be different which is not in itself bad, but most of them don't really have the intended effect, or even detract from the experience.
I'm guessing it's intended to not give the player the Last Chance ticket again after the first prestige in the demo? Sad... I was looking forward to sinking my teeth into the upgrade tree haha. I really liked the concept in the previous version, the prestige upgrades make it even better in this one!
Unless I'm missing something, there's way too little information to make meaningful choices with regards to the roguelike aspect.
What do the unlockable components do, and why should I buy / save up for them? What categories (primary, secondary, precision, defense, etc.) do the unlocks fall under? How many components are currently available in each category? What does Cc mean in the Secondary weapon bias?
Once you communicate all this and more to the player, then maybe the whole sense of "ooh, I'm tipping the scales in my favor / adding strong components to the RNG pool" will be stronger.
I think not telling the player what the chest-bonuses do is a special kind of evil. I was doing so well with max attack distance and almost max attack damage then poof! Attack distance reset to one for a measly increase in damage
Not sure how to feel about those rooms that can't be left until you beat the enemy, like Koltek or whatever his name was. It's possible for players to softlock themselves if they don't have the right abilities when they enter the room.
Ouch! No local saving is really a punch in the gut after coming back to this after investing some time.
You need more feedback on the Eggacha screen, because after unlocking it, players are going to visit it and get confused as to why it's blank. Also when there are eggs, some text instructing the user to select / repeatedly click would be nice.
Same for the Aquarium: if there are no fish, explain how to get them, and explain that dragging fish to the slots gives bonuses.
Ah hell, I forgot to give my thoughts on the game haha
It's very fun! Controls are snappy, camera movement is helpful. Not being able to see much was annoying but the problem went away with some torch upgrades.
I'm not the best at speedrunning though, so the timed challenges gave me the most trouble. Speaking of challenges, after unlocking the first tier, the very next level had its challenge active (tougher monsters) so I was puzzled at the sudden introduction of a new enemy type (the shooters) AND the drastic jump in enemy health. Might've just been a coincidence, but perhaps consider disabling challenges until the player has beaten a level at least once?
Also, this weird thing happened to me: after I realized you can press Down to descend while clinging on a wall, I instinctively started trying to press Up to gain height on a wall, but of course that didn't do what I expected. Now I have to unlearn that... Not sure if it's just me though
