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My Epithets got reset when I started the game like 2 hours ago. The rest of the save, including my in-progress run I had going last time I closed the game, was intact. Seemed to be a one-time thing, as in refreshing didn't reset them again.

This is a good change; it makes sure people will still be able to get shadow comprehension even if they haven't found the specific nodes that reward it, so the growth should be a bit less slow earlygame now.

I accidentally pressed R and lost one of my runs somewhat far in; it would be nice to have a confirmation of some sort for that.

That was neat! Reached end of content in 41 minutes. There's some things that don't feel appropriately balanced (enrich salt mines feels especially useless), but overall the game's pretty good.

Bug report: When loading a save, swap scroll usage is used at the location of the previous action, before moving away from that spot to reach the next. If the path between these actions has a gate, the loading can fail to find a path after the swap as it was used at a different time than in the original run being loaded.

(By the way, got 1882 1998. Fun game to optimize.)

Ability to see what nodes are dead ends makes exploring the map so much more convenient. I thought needing to check every node once to see if it was a dead end or not was an intended part of the game, but I guess it's not.

It's perfectly fine to have content you're extremely unlikely to see. If you get it, you have a single opportunity to explore beyond your means. One single opportunity, with which you're almost certainly not going to be able to do everything and so will have to pick and choose what you actually want to use it for. If you're intentionally aiming for the good luck, of course the rates will feel ridiculously low - because you're not supposed to be intentionally aiming for it, instead just immediately pivoting your run the moment you hit the good luck. In the end, you're not going to be able to achieve much without repeated runs that get far enough to be able to actually experiment with things. (Or at least that's the obvious idea of the game design. Whether they manage to pull that off is up to how well they can actually design the game's challenges.)

Similarly, if you get unlucky on something that has a high chance, then you got unlucky and that's that. You can pivot and try one of the other options you still have open, or just treat it as a run for grinding comprehension instead.

(I don't treat savescumming for RNG as something that needs to be worth considering in balance. You're obviously not supposed to do it since if you were they wouldn't include the RNG in the first place.) (6% isn't even that low of a chance. Are you not doing like 15 runs just to learn all the actions on the map anyway??)

Ah. I thought I checked that one already, but I guess I did spare the other time too. This is why I think it'd be useful to have something that tracks which actions you've completed before.

I mentioned this in my other new comment (now that I played the game more), but the main problem with Shadow Comprehension is actually that I had missed the actions that led to giving more of it, leading to me assuming that they weren't present in the game at all. I still haven't found more than 32 total in the entire game, and by now I believe I actually *have* seen most of the game... and all of those except the exam one are like a minute from the start position.

If the game gives me a reason to believe that map knowledge is actually worthwhile (for the primary goal I'm aiming for which is "getting shadow comprehension"), then I become way more incentivized to look for it. But when literally every action I do doesn't lead to getting any more, I have no reason to keep looking.

It probably doesn't fully help that mapping things out in my head is hard and I can't actually remember which actions I haven't checked for any actions behind them yet. If I knew which actions I had to check it'd be a lot easier to devote a run to just checking that action... though of course this only helps in the event of most unchecked actions having something behind them. The reason why I stopped checking a lot of them was that most of the options I was checking early on were leading to long action chains, and trace amount of stats don't really matter and they just never were leading to anything better. Making the game explicitly communicate which actions you haven't checked for followups is also a strong motivator that that is something that the player should be using as a progress metric.

Allowing random lucky runs is fine. Normal incrementals are usually treated as specifically curated experiences, but they don't have to be, and they're usually more fun the more it feels like you're sequence breaking.

Incremental game players usually hate RNG in their games because it means you can't just brainlessly follow a guide, and allows you to blame bad RNG instead of your strategy. It's best to make sure you always have an RNG-less path to success in general anyway, though if it's possible to get extremely unlucky (e.g. getting 0 truffles if there's no alternatives) it'll be frustrating when it happens anyway.

In current balance, I'm pretty sure the haste potion is more important than the screaming mandrake for getting good runs, anyway. That one I'm curious about how you'll keep from being essential to get on every good run in the future, since it's kind of boring needing a specific RNG roll on that action (which has to be done pretty late in the run too, because of the no calmness gain side effect)

Okay, played a bit more and got a lucky run (lucked into screaming mandrake + haste potion from witch. also got 100 calmness before trying witch, since this was a foxification run and I didn't want to lose the run early, which makes it extra funny), which basically lets you do whatever you want) and managed to win super easily from there (screaming mandrake for hero kill, and haste potion to be able to survive long enough via cabin). It does feel great to get a lucky run, even if it feels like getting a few more epithets isn't all that big of a reward. (I wish I wasn't so scared of the demo lord so I could use the opportunity to pick up A on the exam as well; I thought it was supposed to be a killscreen rather than a trivial fight. Displaying enemy stats ahead of time would help with planning for the battles better.)

It turns out I was missing a few major shadow comprehension sources since they were locked behind a few of the specific actions I hadn't checked yet. I'm not sure how I got that unlucky with what I checked. I still feel like the sources all too focused on the left side of the map and there should be more toward the right. +12 for free every run once you've found the actions is pretty nice, though I wish I found them earlier - that winning run was done starting at 68.

Bug report: The Epithets menu appears to get cut off on the bottom with no way to scroll lower. I had to switch my browser to fullscreen to be able to read the bottom one (no clue how to get it, btw). This is probably a screen resolution issue.

I saw this game but didn't click it at first because it sounded like a visual novel title... Guess I should look more closely at genres next time.

Since Shadow Comprehension is the only thing that actually remains between loops, it'd be nice to have more ways to get it. As is, I'm pretty sure it's optimal to just get the initial 4 from the timid student then immediately quick-restart on loop, since going through the exam takes too long and I don't know of any other sources in the entire map (though of course I haven't looked through everything yet). If you could get more Shadow Comprehension from going to other places or had some other form of persistent progress in the game, it would incentivize exploring more instead of immediately ending the loop to grind. (If you have metaprogression in the game, it immediately becomes a primary goal to grind it out. This is why a lot of roguelikes with metaprogression tie gaining it to the intended main goal.)

I feel like the game could use a glossary or something to explain what all the stats mean. They're all fairly unintuitive, even with the conversion descriptions, so it'd be nice to have. For example, I don't know what Vitality does at all, nor the Perpetual keyword on an action, so using them doesn't really tell me anything about what behavior I should be expecting. And reading the v0.2.0 changelog implies that Calmness actually increases action speed rather than time speed, which is an important distinction that actually significantly changes how important the stat is--but I only learned that from reading the changelog.

I also have no clue how to obtain a lot of things used as ingredients like Raw Material, though it's true I haven't spent that long looking for things yet. It feels a little bad being completely aimless about how I might find such a thing, but I suppose it's fine in the end. (I'm wondering if I just missed a branch of actions to go through somewhere. But I thought I did everything somewhat easily accessible.)

The mouse gimmick doesn't seem to be working - I got it to connect once, but then I pressed R and it just stopped working on my next attempt and I couldn't figure out why.

You follow the maps you buy in town the same way you followed the first map that led you to town. Although note that since the maps lead to different places, they obviously can't all lead to the pyramid.

(If you're farther in area progression than that and need more hints, then ask for them more explicitly! I'm just assuming you haven't even found the rewards from following the maps yet.)

The games are similar on the surface, but in practice they play so much differently that I wouldn't even treat it as "clone with different actions" which is already perfectly serviceable as a different game imo. (It's a game obviously inspired by this one and with similar theming, but different core gameplay mechanics which means the way you actually play the two ends up being nothing alike.)

(It was posted on itch like a month ago. Apparently it got some minor updates since then, but it's hard to judge until the next major content update which will more firmly cement it as being obviously different.)

That game was fun! I felt like it was a bit awkward needing to change large amount of elf assignments, and the "continually keep the writing table running" task in the endgame was quite a strange requirement, but it's cool seeing how the normally expensive things suddenly become dirt cheap from the productivity bonus.

That was a really good game! Last level felt appropriately cool. (It was the only one where I didn't immediately have an idea for how to approach it. Though I had to change my approach for part 1 as well, because I was getting close to running out of bytes.) It was quite scary when I realized my solution had 244 bytes; I was getting worried I'd need to actually optimize that just to get a working solve. But luckily it worked without needing to make it any larger.

The problem comes in sooner than the blue rocks. The problem is the lack of choice in the earlygame.

Not having meaningful choices is the *sole* reason why your earlygame is boring, and that's easily resolved by adding new earlygame content, making the existing earlygame content more interesting, or quickening the earlygame to get to the interesting non-earlygame parts faster. Your lategame is not boring, and it would not be boring even if significantly slower than it is now, because you actually have meaningful decisions to make in lategame. Interesting parts of a game are allowed to be slow (and I believe they actually should be), but it is a problem if uninteresting parts are.

You can get reasonable choice in IL pretty early - do you want to do wanders, short quests, long quests, or combat/magic training? You know exactly what the reward for all of those are and can choose between them fine, and all of them have their own merits for precisely what they'll do and how it benefits you to do these grinds. In your game, you... can break rock A, or rock B, or rock C, or rock D, and they're all the same difficulty (or if they're not, you have no way of knowing that, so you can't use that to judge your choices) and you already know they're all going to give the exact same reward so that doesn't even count as a choice. And while you do it, none of this actually feels like it's speeding anything up because all the numbers are hidden and the difference is minuscule anyway.

It would be fine to make your game one that expects long-term idling. If you want, you don't actually need to speed up the earlygame (although you should probably add to INFO that you can and should prepare a loop that walks through a large amount of rocks in sequence so that you can AFK break them all, in that case); it's just that that particular gameplay loop is still less interesting than the rest of the game. If you do want to make long-term games, you should look into implementing the QoL features that games like Idle Loops contain, such as the ability to edit your next loop while the current one is running, to make it more about preparing your loops ahead of time instead of the game's current implied expectation of active play and making almost every loop different from the last.

I think the size of the world is fine as is. The progression curve doesn't seem like it'd be resolved with a larger world; it feels like basic numerical tweaks would be enough. (Mostly doing something to make the earlygame faster (faster stat level gain?) but nerfing the lategame skills (LERN/STAT/TIME) and/or making them available earlier.)

Continuing to grind a little bit past endgame is pretty fun! Amusingly, I think the endgame would be a bit better without the time mage; it took like 3 minutes to get to this point past when I actually won, and with numbers going up as fast as they do it's perfectly fine if you have to do it 10 times slower while also controlling how many mana flowers you pick up (as you do in the loops before you're strong enough to visit the time mage). At these levels of stats, the game lags too much to keep playing, but that's not really a surprise.

Cool game! The beginning feels really bland because of how simple it is, but once you get into the thick of things it starts to feel really interesting. I had the most trouble near the start before I learned how the game mechanics worked.

Explicit feature request: Pause after loop. I don't want to reset the full queue since the start of the queue is fine, but you can't edit during the loop so I end up needing to delete the last action of the queue to make sure I can be watching the game at the moment the action ends.

I think the game would benefit greatly from showing more hard numbers, most importantly knowing how much each thing actually speeds things up by (I know I can get to level 20 by training on the NPC, but how much better is being level 20 compared to level 10? How much does having one extra LOVE actually help?) but also smaller things like an actual value for the amount of MTVN performing an action will take (you can estimate this by trying the action once, but it's hard to remember all the numbers) and the amount of actions needed to destroy a rock (you can estimate this by hitting it once)

Recruit all the cowgirls (there are 9), give the water from the pyramid to bell, and sleep while cowlike (it may help to turn off strip while sleeping (in Sanctum))

It'd be best to load a save from beforehand. There's ways out in some situations, but some of the scenes are unimplemented in the current version so they boot you, and most of the scenes are bad ends.

According to the wiki, if you have 10+ Ero, you can escape getting captured by choosing sex slave (with male partners on) and continually service without refusing. After like 12 times an event happens. But if you're already on the selling part, you just have to load a past save.

Yes, that is the buttons I meant.

I love the mood and setting of this story! It seems like it'll definitely take a while before there's enough content for me to feel satisfied going through it (as of now the main appeal is more just the school setting than anything about the transformation), but keep it up and I hope I'll remember this still exists in a year or so.

I felt like the character/menu buttons on the top corners weren't clearly telegraphed enough that that's what they are. It'd be nice if it told you explicitly to check them out at some point.

I made a second Spinforge but now feel stuck and the hint is useless (don't you need to know how to use the first formation in order to get this far anyway?). If it was possible to take things out of The First Formation to fill it with Almanacs it'd be possible to progress that way, but as is I don't see any way to make meaningful progress. And I don't really want to grind Potential for 5 Epsilons because that seems like it'd take forever. ...Unless 1000 difficulty is actually not as much as it seems. I guess I never tried just actually doing it to see if I can succeed...

You need to find and save all 9 cowgirls in the world to be able to do Bell's quest.

Not really aware of any notable Cassie scenes beyond the ones to do with Alyssa and the ones involving the desert slavers/gold mine. Alyene has even fewer notable things.

You can also go to the Lil Shop of Horrors and give yourself a cowlike body that way!

When you go to the elevator on the top floor, there's a boss battle. Win the boss battle.

After the boss battle, talk to Mistyra again and finish everything that follows.

Once you're done that, fish up the Slime Orb from the tower if you haven't (you gain access to it earlier in progression than that), and give it to Linda.

Fun game! Would be nice if it was a little harder (rent feels like it should grow like 4 times faster than it does), but it's always fun making number go up.

(This isn't on endless mode. I saw "must exceed 25k" and wasn't expecting to receive a sudden super OP box, so I made sure to prepare enough stuff to get to the 25k goal without it.)

Most likely because you haven't completed the prerequisite quest. To unlock it, you have to complete the quest in the Science Lab Tower, then use the fishing spot.

Pyramid: There's a secret room. Walk around the edges to find it.

Infestation: Head to the Abandoned Base and talk to Mistyra (did i spell the name right).

(rot13) V'z cerggl fher gur FCVPR jbeq pnzr svefg, ohg vg jnf pubfra bhg bs cenpgvpny pbapreaf bs znxvat gur chmmyr npghnyyl jbex gur jnl vg'f vagraqrq (lbh arrq gur svefg naq frpbaq yvarf gb npghnyyl or cebcre jbeqf).

Really cool game! I haven't found how to escape yet, but at least reached two I AM ERROR levels.

Gur neebjf ybbx yvxr gurl ner vzcbegnag ohg V pna'g guvax bs ubj gb hfr gurz sbe nalguvat. Gurer'f nyfb gur cbffvovyvgl bs znxvat n ovttre znc, ohg V whfg nffhzr gung rirel cbffvoyr cbfvgvba gb raq n yriry ng yrnqf fbzrjurer qvssrerag.

Public version releases are consistently on the 8th of the month.

For the main event that's added recently, find and recruit all 9 cowgirls, acquire the water of life from the desert pyramid, and then gift it to Bell. You'll also need to have cow-like features to continue past that (clothes work fine). And unless you have the patreon version, it's not completable right now.

It'd be nice to have a way to bulk-work at Gentlemen's Club. As is it's already a fixed stamina cost with no per-day limit so with a bulk option it'd be possible to train it up after doing res training the normal way.

That being said, you can do most of the useful stuff by just stocking up on stamina potions and drinking a bunch between every tile you walk. Once you get the compass it becomes trivial to go wherever you want.

What exactly do you consider to be "optional"? This game doesn't have a single linear storyline or end point (yet), so literally everything in the game could be seen as "optional".

Fun game; once I got the hint that the game doesn't work on firefox it was fun. Favorite one was middle, the most painful one (how did i take so long on it) was topright.

Tbg n fpber bs sbhegrra; nffhzvat gung'f gur znkvzhz, hayrff gurer npghnyyl vf n jrveq vasvavgr fpber oht bhg gurer fgvyy.

Oh, someone updated the wiki with exact requirements. Looks like it's just "look close enough to a cow" with extremely high leniecy. I just put on my cow onesie (and disabled strip while sleeping) and it worked.