You're right, of course! I think the I need to add more UI elements to give the player feedback on what's going on, and balance the dynamics of the economy better. I wondered if the game would be better with a rival trading company that you are "battling" against.
Great game and idea! I don't know if you thought about this explicitly during when designing the game, but if you enforce that every character has only two hands, then the resulting graph from connections must always form a loop (as it would be a 2-regular graph). This is a very clever mathematical application of the theme. Unfortunately, this is not true if people can have >2 hands (which your game allows).
I really like the ASCII aesthetic. How does the "research pane" on the right work? I noticed the little scientists walking around like they are in a rogue-like, but couldn't figure out what they are doing.
I keep stealing dynamite :( Why are so many wizards walking around with dynamite? I think the focus system currently is a punishment-avoidance mechanic. It would be better if it was a reward-seeking mechanic.
There's a bit of an "Oh, come on" zone right next to the crab where I felt like it could have moved its arm back just a little bit to catch a mutated crab that I didn't want going through.
It's funny you mention that because the attack animation intentionally swings back first before swinging forward to help the players grab that crab that was almost past you. Perhaps, I wasn't too generous!
Hi, thanks! It's my first game ever and I obviously did not telegraph events clearly. I am hoping to add a non-intrusive hint system and make it more obvious when things are going badly for the player.
Thanks for the feedback! I did debate over whether I should improve the spawning logic for the crabs. I did make the special moves (dash / sand quake) specifically to address that -- if you miss a blue crab because it was on the other side of the screen, you might be more likely to pick dash which negates that. You are correct that the energy mechanics are too easy right now.
Ah, this is great feedback. Thank you so much! Especially since the mutation meter goes up when you don't eat a blue crab! I should think about how to best explain that in a nice non-intrusive way. You're not alone in saying this, so it is obvious a problem I should fix!
I am glad to see you remember the early screenshots of the game that I shared on the discord server. I did get off to a very late start in the jam, and you are absolutely right, it definitely did not show promise at the time :D I am glad you think I was able to turn it around.
The lack of anti-aliasing made it hard to read sheets when I inevitably tilted all the pages. I also swung a page wildly and then couldn't put it down! I think the springiness of the mouse controller needs to have strong damping.
