It's been my first ever experience playing this game along side with friend... And it was fantastic! I've seen some gameplay from like a year ago build of the game, and seeing so many little, but REALLY significant changes is super nice!
Starting with what I think about new Kerfur-O craft: yeah, it's a pretty good change (kinda related to that tho, I hope more stuff is going to be added in the caves, cause it took us around an hour of regenerating the layout to find one signle crystal shard. Finding something else along the way would make it feel more worth the time) HOWEVER, I do think that the scuba mask price should be lowered in like half. I can understand it being 1000 + 100 if there's gonna be more things to dive for, however rn it's just a little too much. Lowering the amount of plastic scrap needed from 14 to 10 would also be a small, but appreciated change IMO.
I liked the pacing of the game I've experienced so far. The very first week was CHAOTIC. First time playing and we could barely finish the task like once every two days (now probably it wouldn't be so much of a trouble, but managing servers, generators, hashcodes and signals at the same time is a really nice way to keep player busy in this early game). The second week was the getting used to week. The first good end of a week bonus, and finally some free time, which was spend slowly but surely getting rid of all the trash and cleaning the base bit by bit each day. Around end of week 2 is also when Kerfur was bought, and it's been pretty much a perfect 500 points bonus each week after that. The next two weeks were spend gathering items around the map and preparing money for the Kerfur-O. Small note, I really like how you can also open the second bunker door with a crowbar, it was a very pleasant surprise. Hook is one of the best things in this game, the amount of smart things you can do with it and ATV is insane! And overall, I love how whenever you have an item, it's better to get another one to best utilize it! I can dig the whole area with a shovel, but buying a metal detector makes it easier. That's why I love this game so much, the depth of these mechanics is awesome!
Anyway, one small suggestion I might have about mid game is to have new hashcodes be more likely to appear on a satellite that you haven't visited in a while. At one point Ihad an idea pop into my head about an item that would allow you to name it, and then target it by its name, but honestly? The game loop is so perfect, that you really do get familiar with this map by the end of week 3-4. During week 1 it seemed SO big, so hard to move around fast; but during week 3-4, I was really surprised to notice how it feels like less than a minute passes between one satellite to another. And so, after four weeks our base is clean, our upgrades are upgraded, we found the last Kerfur-O crafting material, and the only thing that was left was to collect scrap. The part I liked is that we had to stop by transformers A LOT during the mid game, especially tr_1 and tr_3, thanks to the tree house and the cave being nearby, and every time we went there I could already picture moving all the useful items from there to craft scrap. When that time came, it was really satisfying for some reason. These two corners of the map are probably our most favourite ones, and I really hope that something similar could be added near tr_2 to make that corner also be rememberable. But unfortunatelly, that's where we stopped at the moment :D
However, I do know, that this is basically the perfect timing, cause from what I know week 5 is when the most exciting events are happening and you can freely explore the map to experience them! The whisps event is also perfectly placed in my opinion. By that time we only had to explore the cave and move the materials from transformers, and those guys really made that process more fun! I've seen someone mention their Red Kerfur moving crazy in this version after similar thing been happening to us :D While running away in the dark of the night from the whisp it was hilarious to witness Red Kerfur fall into the river, while spinning at insane speed. Can't wait to play further and finally buy 3D printer! I love how you can actually decorate your base in this kind of way. Buying a TV, a radin, and a few painting frames to add more cats, funky music, and movies with bad resolution does a fantastic job at providing fun in between events, and even helping you to drop your guard. Don't have anything else to say but to thank you for creating this amazing game! It's definitely phenomenal, it's the most fun I had in a while, and I will return to it with more different friends! I will leave the picture of our office somewhere at the start of week 4, cause we got hit by that stupid geometric shape, and then while testing it we created something really hilarious that just made our office look even more surreal
