itch.io

A waypoint would be a small, I guess quality of life, feature. When I first got to learn my world, and wanted to travel to an island I saw had resources I needed, I tried clicking on it instinctively, to see if it would mark it, as that would prevent me from having to check the map if im on course.
It's not huge, and with the world size only takes travelling there once or twice to get it, but if you're planning on making a quest system, might be worth looking into it for the quests. But if you're making it for quests, might as well expose it to the player as well :)

I look forward to the quest system!

Here's some feedback. Overall, once I got into it, I really enjoyed the game :)

Positive

I want to point out that the "positive" list will likely not be very long. This doesn't mean nothing was good, but rather the opposite. These are mainly points that really stood out to me. So far I am very impressed with the quality of the game.

• Immediately impressed with UI/Menu, found myself moving the mouse over the buttons because it was satisfying.
• I love the in-world explanation for island layouts.
• I did not mind the fog, whilst playing, even though I was concerned about it in my first reddit comment.
• Once through the tutorial, and grasping the game, I enjoyed the casual nature of the game. Unfortunately I can't go too indepth, as I had only about an hour to play.

Constructive Critisism

If at any point something comes across as mean or similar, please know I did not intend it that way. This part of the comment will probably be the longest, as it is easiest to notice things that do not work well (for me).

Points 1-4 are about the tutorial, so here's a TLDR: The tutorial box text I found to be not very readable due to horizontal spacing and/or font. Additionally, I think it can be implemented better with smaller bite-sized chunks, with perhaps some things locked at the start, that the user unlocks later to ease them into the game. Right now it gives ALL the information right at the start, which is overwhelming.

1. Tutorial boxes: text needs more vertical spacing, finding it hard to read like this, letters like 'g' overlap onto lower line when encountering tall letters.
2. Opening the map right after starting because the game tells you to, immediately launches you into a tutorial series about upgrading and travel permits. I think upgrading and permits should be locked at the start, opening up later in the tutorial/game, preventing the bombarding with information right at the start.
3. Similarly, when approaching the first island, another large tutorial series popped up. I had to stop myself from skipping through it. Also, reading it was "in one ear, out the other", as I have no idea what I'm doing yet, but im still getting a lot of information.
4. The tutorial seems to give a lot of information, but I found myself a bit lost on getting started with the game, as I was not sure what to build first. Perhaps it's because I went into the game basically blind from the reddit post (video showcase 4), but it took a bit to get into it. This may be due to me being an idiot and/or info bombing from the tutorial as mentioned before.
5. Personally, I'd prefer the camera stay at a set distance, or maybe it needs more smooth easing? I found myself liking the zooming out of the view when sailing, but perhaps it should wait longer before zooming back in, as changing direction zooms in real fast, causing a sort of jitter because it zooms out again. (This is something that I noticed less and less while playing, so maybe not that big if a thing)
6. I found myself with 'holes' in my discovered map area, because some islands were too big for me to discover the centre. Could be solved by a tiny bump in the map discover circle. Would be nice for the completionists among us :)

Bugs

• Resume button when at an island does not work/is disabled. Escape/E still allowed leaving an island though.
• The mouse is very small at large resolutions (3840x2160)

Feature suggestions

• (An option for) muting sound when game loses focus would be nice :)
• Perhaps a waypoint/marker system, where (right)clicking on the a city of the map places an arrow at the edge of the screen.
• Maybe a wind system could be cool? Would perhaps add something cool with making decisions based on wind direciton, allowing a certain route to be faster than another. Would probably need to be toggleable though, as I imagine not everyone would like it.