Great concept, I really like the 3D planet backgrounds and chill music. As others noted tutorial text is a little much, but I dont think that should prevent you from throwing a bit of writing into the rest of the game. It took until halfway into my run that i noticed you had to sell X of a resource in 1 transaction to fulfill the contract. I was never able to fulfill any sell 15+ contracts even if all I did was sell low qualities. Feels like the Atom Smasher is a bit too limited since after using it to fulfill a contract or two the energy requirement (and cost to refill energy) is not worth it. I also had Miss Tutorial pop up before i even made my first move on the 2nd planet to tell me i was fucked and should just give up (but I ended up making quota just fine which I thought was funny). I feel like using profits to purchase buildings/upgrades between planets would mix up the gameplay.
Not gonna lie, I was struggling to beat the later quotas just during testing, and I've been wanting to have 8 planets a run instead of just the 5, so difficulty needs tweaking.
I played the tutorial and the Phenor round and had a ton of thoughts to share. I'm gonna be real with you, the tutorial has too much dialogue, I think you should start cut like 90% of it AND/OR start the tutorial on the planet screen and sprinkle it in. For example I'd keep the line about untrained captains, then ONE line about harvesting a planet (vagueness is ok) and then for the gameplay part have a red circle around the Logistics Network with every other building blacked out, then the player creates 2 helium (scripted) and then unblack the Atom Smasher, red circle around the Atom Smasher. Player creates a medium quality helium, unblack the Trading Hub and put a little right click mouse sprite above it with a red circle, check the thing and there's a dude who wants one medium quality helium, red circle around return and red circle around trading hub and a left click sprite above it, red circle around medium quality helium. BAM! That's the tutorial. Now aside from the tutorial, I didn't like that the request guys in the trading hub seemed quick to leave, I got a request to sell 10 things and felt like it wasn't physically possible, are they time based or action based? They also need a counter, like 5/10 items sold so far. I feel like either way its based if you are taking actions that fill up the counter then it should extend the duration they would wait. Final bit of criticism is that I feel post tutorial you should just black all or most of the planets out as it's not clear where the player should go first, and a progression might be better than a free form. The game is interesting and has a good premise, so don't take it too negatively. I really like the music as well and it seems like you put a good bit into this so I hope you keep at it!
I definitely hear you on the tutorial dialogue being too much. It's funny that you suggest sprinkling some tutorials into gameplay because for anything not need-to-know-to-play, it does just that. Like the contracts about to leave usually gets triggered during the tutorial (which probably shouldn't happen) but it'll play whenever that first happens. There's not a lot that uses that setup yet, but I feel like moving more to it would be beneficial given the feedback.
You're not the only one whose read the contracts as "Sell X over time" instead of how they're currently implemented as "Sell X all at once". That definitely needs to be fixed, along with how hard they are.
I have seen this game in others DDs and wanted to give it a try. The idea is interesting since sucking planets dry of resources is a neat sci fi concept.
First off, I did get tired of text quickly. From the introduction, to the tooltips, to the tutorial, I didn't expect to get walls of text every time. When there is so much fluff mixed with tutorial info, it is hard to know when something is worth paying attention to. And yeah that resulted in me skipping part of the tutorial.
Maybe you can get used to it after a while, but completing contracts at the same time as maxing resources felt too difficult, specially with the resource draw RNG. I tried to meet a modules contract but couldn't get any modules before it expired. Later on I had one that said "sell 10 resources" but I felt it never completed itself. Time advanced every time I did anything so there is an unclear time limit making things more stressfull.
I don't understand the atom smasher, when am I supossed to use it? It grows in power cost every time so if I use it on low cost stuff I end up earning little money, while also running out of time for contracts. I think that using the second ability to get power also increases the cost of the main ability, why?
UI feels a bit sluggish, every action locks all buttons for some time, slowing down gameplay.
I think I got a sound bug on the asteroid level, a sound repeating non-stop.
"Depart from planet" appears as the second row button, making it look like something that should be activated constantly instead of a "end the run" button. I should get special treatment.
I think the game has an interesting premiese, it is just the gameplay that needs iteration and more polish.
Thanks for playing the game, as well as for the criticism. No really, I appreciate the harsh criticism since it means I have more work to do!
Appreciate the thoughts on the walls of text. One of the goals of the new system was meant to be "less walls of text", so it clearly failed.
Regarding the contracts, the current implementation is actually "Sell X at the same time". I feel like your read is the more natural one and the current way could be added as a harder tier. Still, it never occurred to me that they would read differently.
Buildings using more power is a balancing mechanism, but the power gain of Atom Smasher increasing the cost of the primary is a good point. Will fix.
I've been waiting for someone to call out the UI sluggishness, lol. Will prioritize.
Can you clarify the sound bug? I thought I squashed most of those.
Regarding the contracts, the current implementation is actually "Sell X at the same time". I feel like your read is the more natural one and the current way could be added as a harder tier. Still, it never occurred to me that they would read differently.
Oh ok makes sense, that does make the contracts much more difficult to complete.
Can you clarify the sound bug? I thought I squashed most of those.
You can see it in action at the 17:00 timestamp of the video. The grab resource sound keeps repeating..
Comments
Great concept, I really like the 3D planet backgrounds and chill music. As others noted tutorial text is a little much, but I dont think that should prevent you from throwing a bit of writing into the rest of the game. It took until halfway into my run that i noticed you had to sell X of a resource in 1 transaction to fulfill the contract. I was never able to fulfill any sell 15+ contracts even if all I did was sell low qualities. Feels like the Atom Smasher is a bit too limited since after using it to fulfill a contract or two the energy requirement (and cost to refill energy) is not worth it. I also had Miss Tutorial pop up before i even made my first move on the 2nd planet to tell me i was fucked and should just give up (but I ended up making quota just fine which I thought was funny). I feel like using profits to purchase buildings/upgrades between planets would mix up the gameplay.
Fun game to zone out to, promising prototype.
Thanks for playing and for leaving feedback!
Not gonna lie, that's a funny bug with Miss Tutorial telling you to give up immediately lmao. Definitely need to fix that.
interesting to see the new graphical makeover with 3D animations.
the game feels much harder than before, which i guess is a good thing because it was waaaay too easy back then
you REALLY need to add outline to the text and maybe also contrasting backgrounds because some of the button labels are very hard to read.
Thanks for playing again!
Not gonna lie, I was struggling to beat the later quotas just during testing, and I've been wanting to have 8 planets a run instead of just the 5, so difficulty needs tweaking.
Noted on the contrast.
I played the tutorial and the Phenor round and had a ton of thoughts to share. I'm gonna be real with you, the tutorial has too much dialogue, I think you should start cut like 90% of it AND/OR start the tutorial on the planet screen and sprinkle it in. For example I'd keep the line about untrained captains, then ONE line about harvesting a planet (vagueness is ok) and then for the gameplay part have a red circle around the Logistics Network with every other building blacked out, then the player creates 2 helium (scripted) and then unblack the Atom Smasher, red circle around the Atom Smasher. Player creates a medium quality helium, unblack the Trading Hub and put a little right click mouse sprite above it with a red circle, check the thing and there's a dude who wants one medium quality helium, red circle around return and red circle around trading hub and a left click sprite above it, red circle around medium quality helium. BAM! That's the tutorial. Now aside from the tutorial, I didn't like that the request guys in the trading hub seemed quick to leave, I got a request to sell 10 things and felt like it wasn't physically possible, are they time based or action based? They also need a counter, like 5/10 items sold so far. I feel like either way its based if you are taking actions that fill up the counter then it should extend the duration they would wait. Final bit of criticism is that I feel post tutorial you should just black all or most of the planets out as it's not clear where the player should go first, and a progression might be better than a free form. The game is interesting and has a good premise, so don't take it too negatively. I really like the music as well and it seems like you put a good bit into this so I hope you keep at it!
Thanks for playing the game and the criticism!
Played for a bit. Video:
I have seen this game in others DDs and wanted to give it a try. The idea is interesting since sucking planets dry of resources is a neat sci fi concept.
First off, I did get tired of text quickly. From the introduction, to the tooltips, to the tutorial, I didn't expect to get walls of text every time. When there is so much fluff mixed with tutorial info, it is hard to know when something is worth paying attention to. And yeah that resulted in me skipping part of the tutorial.
Maybe you can get used to it after a while, but completing contracts at the same time as maxing resources felt too difficult, specially with the resource draw RNG. I tried to meet a modules contract but couldn't get any modules before it expired. Later on I had one that said "sell 10 resources" but I felt it never completed itself. Time advanced every time I did anything so there is an unclear time limit making things more stressfull.
I don't understand the atom smasher, when am I supossed to use it? It grows in power cost every time so if I use it on low cost stuff I end up earning little money, while also running out of time for contracts. I think that using the second ability to get power also increases the cost of the main ability, why?
UI feels a bit sluggish, every action locks all buttons for some time, slowing down gameplay.
I think I got a sound bug on the asteroid level, a sound repeating non-stop.
"Depart from planet" appears as the second row button, making it look like something that should be activated constantly instead of a "end the run" button. I should get special treatment.
I think the game has an interesting premiese, it is just the gameplay that needs iteration and more polish.
Thanks for playing the game, as well as for the criticism. No really, I appreciate the harsh criticism since it means I have more work to do!
Oh ok makes sense, that does make the contracts much more difficult to complete.
You can see it in action at the 17:00 timestamp of the video. The grab resource sound keeps repeating..