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(+1)

Really slick UI and relaxing gameplay. I played to 160A supernovas.

I have played a number of incremental games, and this is actually the first time I encountered the alphabetical naming scheme. I don't mind it at all, but it does seem to take away a bit of the "whoa big numbers" feeling, and I feel like it might be a little confusing for folks new to the genre.

There were a couple tiny things I noted during my playthrough:

- I would often accidentally close a panel because I would mix up the satellites / science panels. A different style for the currently active tabs would help
- The borders around the panels are very subtle, and there's no hover effect for the tabs
- Because the panel borders are so subtle, it sort of looks like the tab bar is strangely aligned
- It seems that the itch canvas is a different aspect ratio than what's intended -- the UI is slightly cut off unless you go full screen.
- Even with the game as short as it is, progress-saving would have been nice. I had to take a short break mid-pay and in my paranoia, just let the game continue progressing. My instincts served the right, I'm not sure I would have come back if I had to start over. A pause button would be an odd feature, but that would have worked too. I didn't want to miss anything exciting during my break.
- I still don't understand how science works. It seems like stuff orbits many times before I earn science. I actually just went back to test this, and I see now that science is earned per earth orbit. Maybe the color of the science icon is a clue there, but this didn't seem obvious at all.
- The lack of a win condition was a little sad.

(1 edit)

Thank you so much for playing.

All really good points, most of them come down to that I had an idea on how to solve it but didn't have enough time. The number system is actually the most common system I've come across, just ahead of K,M,B,AA,BB,.. I had initially planned for actual names K,M,B,T,Qd,Qn,... but I had space constraint issues and I intended for the numbers to get into the UnD range but that ended up not working; so in hindsight I would have gone back and done full names.

Tab buttons should have shown if they were active, and if I had formulated a full plan of the science and satellite tabs I could have made it less intuitively confusing. Fun fact the science tab is internally called the satellite tab, and satellite tab is internally the moons tab - their roles shifted and merged a little which happened from time constraint getting it done.
What do you mean by hover effects for the tabs?
I neglected to realise that the small screen when testing was different to small screen on web and overlooked the issue, I was completely blind to it being an issue as I just assumed it was the same and while I did complete the game on web I had it full screen. Something I'm aware of for the future.
I wanted to add progress saving but I didn't structure my data in a way that made it easy to save - of all things it would have also required me to remake how music works, if I had been in the mindset that I needed saving early on I could have probably done it but I didn't expect it to be a requirement and lowered the priority. This game is a big learning process.
I hadn't anticipated an issue with science, you earn science every time Earth or a satellite (natural or artificial) orbits - Earth around the sun, satellite around their body. Upgrading science per orbit affects everything, upgrading satellites for a planet increases the permanent boost granted to the planet - get more satellites and upgrade them and you can end up with multipliers in the hundreds. I had actually balanced the game around people using science fully otherwise planets like Mercury earn nothing. In the future I'm going to have to add in guides for everything even if I think it makes sense.
I had intended for there to be dwarf planets to buy with black holes and I was going to have a win condition once you buy the entire solar system but I had to drop that because of time and so no win condition.

This game has so much packed into it even though it doesn't look like a lot, soaked up all of my time for these extras. I would love to revisit this game some time, it would also be a really good first 3D game to make, and I can make it fit the vision I had for it fully.

What do you mean by hover effects for the tabs?

I phrased that poorly -- I meant the buttons that control which tab is currently shown. It's not *totally* obvious that they're clickable, because unlike other clickable stuff in the game, there's no hover effects. The borders are a clue, but they are very subtle.

(5 edits)

There is a hover effect, but it is more subtle than others - I relied on positioning to communicate that they're buttons more than colour and effect; I will need to rethink it.

I do have some fancy designer monitors with accurate colours and when doing web development I do test on normal monitors, but I didn't this time as I just forgot.

Edit: I just tested on my bad monitors and I can see the outlines perfectly fine, faint but clearly visible (on a TN panel it's actually blaringly obvious). I might need to test on another monitor but can you confirm that your contrast settings on your monitor is 0/default and you can't see the outline or tab button hover effects?

(2 edits)

Interesting. The outlines are visible, but faint. The tab button hover effects seem more subtle, but upon closer inspection, they are there. Just at nearly homeopathic levels of brightness.

I am on a 2021 16" MacBook Pro on the "Apple XDR Display" preset. My display contrast setting is "normal" and brightness is ~50%, and "truetone" disabled.