Thank you for the excellent write-up. Here are my main ideas about the future of Prophicient:
- main change: adding interactive tutorial scene with small step-by-step tasks
- JSON is planned to be abandoned in favor of something better. Maybe taking inspiration from Minecraft WorldEdit’s syntax? As well as adding a proper list of functionality. Implementing standalone expression evaluator would also enable a web build.
- hover tips for feedback were not added due to technical issues. This will be resolved. Also, there are further functional improvements planned for the UI, including resetting the level to see the constraints better.
- game economy was introduced to better tie in the Ingredients. It is confusing and hard to design levels for. The current plan is to replace it with flat difficulty levels, with no money carried over between levels. Maybe something like Bad Piggies star system.
- tune the miner AI a bit, and explain the miner’s actions better in game.
- remake the graphics
All of this is also held back by all the technical debt accumulated in the project. E.g. there is no level editor, spaghetti code, etc. I will try my best to make this into a complete game.