itch.io

I did manage to get all the upgrades and win. I had thought the thing with the timers may have ended up being something like that, and I understand your point about the remote controls.

At first I thought the same thing about the client bots, where the frustration of them getting in the way was the point, but after a while it became super tedious and annoying to the extent that it started detracting from the fun. It started making me hope the game would end sooner so I wouldn't have to deal with it anymore. Could just be me, but that's how I felt in the moment.

Maybe making the remote control room-level could work, so you can just click the room and kick off maintenance. That way there's progression to it, without getting rid of the early problem to work around. I could see BufferBot trying to find a way to solve the cluttered client problem.

Overall, I liked the game, and hope to see what other games you come up with.

Neat game. I thought the little BufferBot was cute, as well as the different types of maintenance stations. Some notes for areas that could be improved:

• The mix of room-based timers and station-based timers is a little confusing, since there doesn't appear to be any reason for it. It's also strange that the timer for rooms that are not unlocked yet are already ticking down at the start.
  • The "Next Client" timer on room-based areas implies that's how long before the next client bot will come, but that's not how it works at all.
• There does not appear to be any reason to add stations to rooms with room-based timers, since interacting with any station will add to the room's timer
  • I ended up buying all the added stations just so they wouldn't clutter the upgrade panel any more
• It is frustrating that client bots block the clicking area for stations. Their click box takes up most of the zone for clicking on a station, and there doesn't appear to be any reason to click on them. Later on, when there are a lot of bots and stations, I ended up mis-clicking a lot because a client would walk by as I was clicking on the already limited zone for repairing a station.
• The "Remote Control" upgrade ramps up in cost a bit too quickly at the beginning. Later on it's pretty much the only thing to spend money on, so it isn't so bad, but at the beginning the player is left manually clicking and waiting on so many stations because the upgrade costs way too much. Overall it makes the middle section of the game very tedious.

I've beaten the game and have done a few slow runs, still have never seen it. Feels like the chance for better nodes is static at the starting low rate, so there's no progression as the target score gets bigger and bigger.

I had it happen with a node depth of 3-4. I've not been able to reproduce it very frequently, so I'm not sure how exactly to get it to happen. I definitely lost all of my "b" variables somehow, though. Apologies I can't be more specific with it. I'll let you know if I manage to find it again.

Game seems neat, but is very clunky to play at the moment

Some issues near the start. If you have a node that has a more nodes in it, sometimes clicking the node to remove it deletes all the nodes inside. You don't get them back to place again, which has led to me being unable to use my "b" variable outside of the initial setter. Not sure how exactly to get it to happen reliably, but it has ruined a few attempts.

The nodes you get at the end of a round all appear to be very limiting. For example, I don't see any of the repeat nodes implied by the game description. I get a lot of basic variables, and setters to directly set a variable to a value, which doesn't scale well. Perhaps reducing the number of variables you have access to early (I don't need 1 of every letter of the alphabet to start) so it's more likely usable nodes show up would be helpful.

UI around the nodes you have could also be improved, as it's hard to tell what I have access to with the jumble of nodes in no clear order.

I like the idea presented for the game, and kudos on actually getting things going. I know criticism can come across as someone is upset, so I want to make it clear that I'm presenting the negatives to highlight areas of improvement as I see them.

First, I'll describe my experience thus far. I was intrigued by the idea of the game, and so I opened it to see how it was implemented. By the time I had identified my character and how to move, I ran into the end of currently available content. I thought, surely there's more to this, maybe they just haven't put in the explanation of the controls yet. I'll press every key and see what they do. Nothing. Ok, maybe I need to walk to another area and come back to check out the orb, sort of Metroidvania-style. A bit early to do that, but it's early days for the game. Jumped the gap into a pit, had to reset the game. Had to sit through the slow intro again to find nothing did anything. Left comment to see if I was missing something.

Secondly, feedback as I understand it. As I said, I like that something has been made, but I feel it's been posted far too soon. The experience I had left a bad first impression, as it's little more than a starting template you might expect Unity or whomever to provide. Generally, when working on a project, it's important to release work in deliverable increments. If the audience can't experience whatever feature you have, it doesn't appear to exist for them, and asking them to just know the context you have is unreasonable. They can only know what is presented to them in game. Communication with the user is also vital, and it needs to be in-game. Expecting everyone to get confused and stumble around until they eventually look elsewhere for info, like the dev logs, is too far when you don't have people invested yet. Dev logs and external resources are only useful if you have people interested and they know the importance of them, two things that haven't been established by the game yet.

I would recommend that the initial release have something for the player to do. If there's nothing to play, there's nothing for them to playtest.

Seems like the game isn't in a ready state yet. No sound, no apparent way to interact with the one visible object aside from the character. Walking to the right leads to you falling off a platform and getting stuck off screen. The only keys that seem to do anything aside from WASD to move and space to jump were tab, caps lock, and shift, which only opened slow unskippable text boxes that implied the powers associated with them were not unlocked yet.

Was the wrong build uploaded?

Thank you! It was so loud before I couldn't play it. It's a neat little game

Might I recommend volume control. The game is so very loud.