Hello,
I played your game for a few hours, up to the end of the game (Exaltation).
What I think works well: the main incremental gameplay loop, in the "Buildings" and "Jobs" panels. As it's the core of this genre of incremental games, that's good news! It doesn't break new ground, but it was enough to keep me playing at least.
What could be improved:
- First, part of the UI. The “Buildings” section is clear overall, but the buildings themselves could be organized more effectively. For example, production and storage buildings should be grouped separately. This does not necessarily require a visible divider, but at least a more consistent order. You already do this with the three housing buildings: Shack, Hut, and Lodge are listed together, followed by a production building, the Well. That works well.
However, the rest of the list is much less organized: Ash Bin, Cellar, Cistern, and Vault, all of which increase storage capacity, are scattered among production buildings. This can be confusing, especially while the player is still learning the evolving list of buildings, and the player wastes time while searching through the whole list. - Second, effects and production information. There are quite a few buttons whose effect is unclear. For instance, "Temper" in the "Craft" tab. After using it, I guess it increases craft speed, but it remains unclear (for instance, is it cumulative if I cast Temper several times during the 20 second window? The game doesn't tell.) Sometimes, Temper also add things like "+7 basalt" after the "Craft speed" - I don't get what it does. If it adds a mere 7 basalt to my storage, it's effectively useless. The "Philosophy" tab is quite unclear too, as is the "Quests" tab. Phrasings like "The caravan returns with fair trade" doesn't tell me anything. "Grey March - work steadies"? Nice, I guess... But was it worth spending resolve on... ? Finally, there are some buildings that clearly drain production from others (some consume warmth for instance), but I didn't find any kind of precise calculation somewhere, so I don't know how much I'm misallocating resources and investment.
- Third, crafting is tedious. In such games, most of the time, you build buildings or assignate workers who will passively consume some goods to produce other, advanced goods. Here, in Ashen's domain, the player has to actively craft the goods himself and repetitively click on "Temper" to hasten production. This requires the player to keep looking at his computer and especially at the "Craft" tab for long amounts of time, rather than simply doing something else or using the other tabs.
- Finally, and this is the worst offender, the world is soulless. The game seems heavily inspired by 'A dark room' or other games like it, and it's a good starting point, but it doesn't have any kind of setting comparable to 'A dark room'. Yes, the player starts alone in the dark and gathers stuff to start a fire, but there isn't a world beyond that. In 'A dark room', events happen as the game unfolds - mentions of beasts roaming near in the night, wanderers arriving at the village and so on, and after a while the player himself starts his exploration. Here, all the text is both extremely generic, devoid of meaning and probably LLM-generated. Phrases like "A stone at the edge. The wastes notice." or "Memory has a desk" don't add anything and are almost frustrating to read, not because they are LLM-generated, but because they are empty. There is also a whole "Realm" tab, with Contracts, commitments and 'caravan', but here again it's quite empty. Who or what are we trading with? What are the Ashens we house? Why are we gathering so much ash? Don't be afraid to put details and real world-building here, it can give a soul to your game.
All in all, it seems to have required a good deal of work, so congrats for making it this far! I will keep an eye on future developments.