CORN! TORNADOS! YAY! :D
Ok, I gave this a couple tries. Still haven't made positive money but came pretty close the second time. That building penalty is really harsh, lol!
I think the biggest issue holding me back from trying it a third time is the buy and sell menu interface. The timer still counts down (though isn't updated) when this menu is open, but the inventory itself is just not designed to be quick. The inventory management part would be much smoother if you either:
- removed the ability to sell corn, instead force using the conversions to milk and eggs. This would let you "auto-sell" the inventory without needing the strategy of what to sell/buy. Basically, streamline the gameplay loop so we can just run around between everything instead of managing the little arrows of a selling menu. A bonus to this fix would be that the game forces the player to learn corn can convert up instead of trying to sell only the corn and ending with a big penalty at the end for ignoring the barn and chickens.
- If you want to keep the sell screen time management aspect, replace the arrow interface with something faster, almost instant to use. Buttons such as "sell corn" that can auto-repeat if held down.
- For either one above, controller/keyboard input on the sell menu would be so much faster, so the mouse doesn't need to be involved in input.
I got the main loop the second time, but it's still really hard to keep up with everything.
The other big thing that could help is some kind of "visual feedback" for how each building is doing. I think if we had some kind of hud or icon for the building healthbars the game would be a lot fairer to play. It's frustrating to walk across the map to check and see that the building is actually still at 3/4 health.
A smaller, easier thing would be simply to speed up the player's movement. That would help also alleviate some of the pain going back and forth between checking up on buildings/crops/selling. And I don't think it will off balance the game much since it's so harsh already.
Sound, music, and art were all quite nice. I love the idea here, and the game certainly feels frantic. With a bit of polish and maybe some better instructions, I think the game loop could go from feeling great to feeling really awesome! Loved the humor!