itch.io

By the way -- is HGV short for "Heavy Goods Vehicle"?

So it indicates the cost of vehicle maintenance?

Yea, I love "number games" like this, so I enjoy playtesting this. =)

And the 8-bit retro style is really nice. =)

GAME UPDATE 0.4 > ISSUE > CAN'T DECREASE ADVERTISING WHEN BALANCE IS NEGATIVE

Ok, so this is a funny one. Sometimes, if you upgrade too fast, the factory can't keep up  with the demand, and then you need to lower advertising to lower demand, or the gain / loss ratio goes off.

BUT, if your balance went negative, then the game won't let you downgrade your advertising either!

You're stuck in a downward spiral: expenses higher than production, and no way to decrease costs.

GAME UPDATE 0.4 > THANKS!

Thanks for the update! The overall game balance in this version is a lot better.

Didn't get a notification about the update from ITCH, though. I'm not quite sure how update notifications on ITCH.IO work. Hmz.

(Anyway, there were still a few remaining issues, but you've already done a good job. I'll post about the remaining issues I've discovered in separate threads.)

BUG > ADVERTISING RELATED SIDE-EFFECT

Ok, this one is another advertising upgrade related issue.

It works like this... you upgrade advertising [+] 8 times... then you downgrade advertising [-] 8 times.. and as a result the upper limit of "Unit's requested" will be permanently increased, without any cost per minute.

BUG/EXPLOIT > TARGET-FOCUS AFFECTS PRODUCTION SPEED

In other words -- by keeping the Factory as the focused object, production speed is increased.

You could say, it's like having the boss   at the factory, so everyone there works faster. But honestly, it 's  just kinda annoying.

BALANCING ISSUE > EFFECTIVENESS OF ADVERTISING

The "effectiveness" of increasing advertising in cities does not justify using it. Especially in the closest cities, their demand of unit's requested raises so slowly over time, that it doesn't make any sense to use advertising to increase the number of units's requested.

ISSUE

The upper limit of "Unit's requested" cannot be reached in the time it takes for the transport to do a round-trip from factory to the city and back.

FEATURE REQUEST

It would be super-nice if we could also click on the transport vehicles to see the cargo stats of that vehicle. (Same info you get when clicking on a city.)

Perhaps also, when the vehicle is selected the road to where it's going could be highlighted?

RATIONALE

It's sometime very difficult to see on the "main road" where a particular transport is going, which makes it a bit difficult to optimize that particular target without a lot of additional city-clicking.

BALANCING ISSUE > FACTORY UPGRADE AT 800,000+ 

Factory upgraded to 800,000+ level, STILL can not keep up with demand, even with all city advertising set to 0 -- and using only horse carriages.

This is kind of a funny issue, since it's hinting that "beer sells itself so well that you don't even need to advertise".

BUG/EXPLOIT > DECREASING ADVERTISING WILL SET DEMAND FROM 0 TO 5

There appears to be an exploit regarding the "Upgrade Advertising"-feature.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE

Increase advertising from 0 to 1, at a cost of 200$.

Then immediately decrease advertising from 1 to 0.

Unit's requested will be reset to 5 at this point, faster than they would be if you just allowed the demand to grow "normally" in relation to time.

ISSUE

If you do this exploit between the first two cities, even a factory upgraded to 400,000+ level, cannot keep up with the demand.

QUESTION > ADVERTISING > UPGRADE

Does upgrading advertising also decrease the delay between "Unit's requested" -- or only raise the upper limit of unit's requested?

Answer: Yes, it does. Which is good... but  the delay is still very very long, even when upgraded to millions. So the overall balance just seems off.

FEEDBACK > TRANSPORT > UPGRADES (no downgrades)

Just like it is currently possible to increase / descrease the amount of advertising at a city --   it would be awesome if we also had the ability to "Downgrade Transport" -- and get back some of the value invested.

This would be useful for balancing the production vs delivery vs demand ratio -- because it is  a time dependant property, which is also affected by the speed (and amount) of items delivered. (Sometimes you need to slow down the delivery.)

But it's nice, that the Transport Upgrade is a single-time cost vs increased cost in time.

FEEDBACK > FACTORY > STATS

The property listed as "Beer Unit's Produced" is NOT actually the number of unit's "produced" (that would be the total number of units ever produced).

It is actually the "Number of Units in Storage" (available for pickup/delivery)

Very nice game. If all the bugs and balance issues were fixed.  

4/5!

Such a beautiful and funny game. Love it. =

I totally get that. I'll try to write up a tutorial for the game at the same time as I release an updated version in the future. Thanks for testing, anyway. =)