itch.io

I installed the repair system in one of the mounts on my first ship, then upgraded to a different ship, and now I cannot ever use repair systems again apparently? You can replace a thing that is installed in your current ship's weapon slots, but there's no way to uninstall from the collection screen and no way to switch back to a lower level ship.

Without a way to repair, and with shields apparently doing nothing, eventually it doesn't matter how much firepower you have because each enemy unit will get one shot off before it dies and your hull is inevitably eroded away.

Also many weapons have damage numbers change by a different value from what is displayed before you buy the upgrade, which is confusing.

The concept is great, but the execution is... lacking.

The timescale and upgrade tree are both set up such that the strategy of what to cut when, which is supposed to be the core of the game, quickly becomes irrelevant because all that matters is clicking on every pixel as fast as you can. The interface gives you very little information at a glance; if you stop to read the popups for each section that would give you more data to make decisions with, but if you take the time to read anything you're already too slow. The random events and special conditions are supposed to add complications, but in practice the player has no way to respond to them, so you just do the same thing as always as fast as you can. I still have no idea what vent crews or cleanup crews do; I just bought them because I had spare money. And the hitboxes are all over the place, very little correlation with what the monster looks like. 

Overall, it feels like there wasn't a single aspect of this game that was actually designed by a human. Or even reviewed by a human.

Love the concept, and looking forward to future developments.

One place I'd really like some polishing though is interface clarity. In combat it's frequently unclear what an enemy actually did (or attempted to do) in a cut-in animation, and the text log just does not mention them. And I think I like the scope and variety in the tech trees, but the descriptions of each upgrade often seems to leave things out, or reference values and tags which the player never got an explanation for and can't see anywhere else, so it's unclear what is affected or even if you're buying a bonus or a penalty.

Also there's a few places where right hand and left hand are swapped on buttons. And some encounters where I see "-1 mercy" when I would have expected +1 and I can't tell if that's just a typo in the text because I can't find any way to view the mercy value. And I genuinely have no idea what is going on in the chapel events.

I don't have a marker. How am I supposed to point out errors? Just reject them without any explanation if they're missing a page?

I do really like the visual style of the game. Downloading the full version on my phone now, and I definitely look forward to future updates.

It seems like production happens as a result of the animations, rather than the animations being coded to reflect the rate of production? Which is mostly fine, but it means that pressing the full screen button cuts your gathering speed to about 1/3rd because the bees have to fly across a wider screen. The predicted time to afford things also fluctuates wildly, presumably because it's calculated based on past performance rather than a projection of what you should be getting based on your number of bees. At the very least it should be measured over a longer time period, instead of saying you'll be done in two seconds one moment and then saying that it will never finish the next because all your workers came back at the same time and then left together.

There seems to also be a lot of "features" that are intended to keep the player staring at the screen and doing busywork, like how you need to click on the hive every 40 seconds or your production rate gets penalized? These add nothing to the game. There are no decisions involved, no direct progress as a result, it's just a chore. When designing a game you need to remember that every extra thing to do is a cost, not a benefit, and it needs to provide enough fun to justify paying that or it just makes the game worse. Telling your "AI assistant" to just add more features without considering their purpose will not improve the product.

I'm not certain, but I think that your units regenerate if they stay out ofcombat long enough to turn from white back to blue. If so, that would mean that as long as your units are individually tougher than the enemies, it's to your advantage to dart in, take a bunch of non-lethal damage but destroy a lot of enemies, then back off to regenerate before repeating the process.

There's also some times when there are two separate enemy groups, usually red and orange (might be hard to tell depending on your monitor), who will fight each other if you evade them but if you stay in between you need to fight both simultaneously.

Unlocked the first two scenes. Found the three names, delivered them in the correct order, door is still locked. Go back through every room clicking on every interactable, none of them do anything until I touch the record in the wall frame, and then I get kicked directly to the menu.

I'm not gonna go through the whole game again, but just out of curiosity what was supposed to happen after the voice in the hole leaves?

Are there supposed to be any... decisions in this "strategy" game?

You can't not eat something once it's on the floor, and it doesn't matter what order you eat things in, so having there be a separate step to click on one of the food items is just wasting time for no benefit.

Choosing when to rest is likewise not an actual decision, because you can't avoid doing it, the end of each level applies the effects of fullness automatically, and the penalty for not pressing the button often enough or pressing it too soon is that it just happens anyway... but slower.

Really feels like you told the AI to "add more mechanics" without putting any thought into what those were. Ultimately the only thing the "player" does is press the spin button and then wait for the wheel to stop spinning.

I clicked to read the full terms and it sat there "loading" for half an hour while I did other things. Came back and it still wasn't done so I closed the window. Am I doing it right?

Is the scene unlock supposed to require a perfect unbroken combo? There's definitely been times I didn't miss a single beat in the first song and ended up with a score in the 70k range because of a handful of 'good' instead of 'perfect' hits. I haven't been able to get above about 86,000 once (though part of that might be browser problems)...

I love the concept, but the minigames are kinda borked. The maze starts out trivially easy, almost impossible to lose, until she abruptly decides to stop messing around and it becomes completely impossible to win. The concentration game always gives you a random chance of sweeping the board in your first move, but when her turn comes she either chooses in a completely random, brain dead manner, or she magically knows where every single card is and just gets to declare herself the winner.

If she kept track of every card which had been revealed and always made optimal plays, that would still be better than any human but would give you a fair chance. Instead she just openly cheats, unless she wants to let you win.

Do the Mind and Lust stats have any effect in the current build, or do bind attacks only exist to trade combat turns for animations?

It would be nice if the rules for where the dungeon entrance went were clarified; I had it jump halfway across the dungeon when I put a room too far to the left, allowing adventurers to bypass most of my traps.

A way to refund construction would also be nice, and remove a lot of the annoyance from things like something being built in a different room from what the player thought was selected.

Given that income and invasion chance both only happen once at the beginning of the day, and you can't build or place things while somebody is in the dungeon, I question the value of the countdown timer... I don't think the game would lose anything by being entirely turn-based, and it would reduce the impact of any glitches or annoyances in the control interface while you get that polished up.

Overall, I love the concept and it looks like you have a good foundation, so I definitely look forward to future developments!

Got about halfway through with the longest sword, hit r to go back to the checkpoint after falling, and everything freezes.

Well, that was just excessively adorable. Any chance of a sequel, or other expansion on the setting?