I am kind of at a crossroads with the game,
I feel like I have all the logic and the mechanics for Age I working and figured out pretty nicely.
I am working on a log that you can view between spins to review what happened.
The dilemma I'm in right now is: do I continue working forward? Add Age II? Come up with all the technologies, and new elements, and balancing etc? Or do I go back and focus on refining and improving what I have now?
I'm still not happy with the overall look of the game - esp the UI - and I had always intended the icons to be placeholders... but on the one hand everything is 'serviceable' and 'good enough'...
I'm just trying to come up with how to deal with future tech and mechanics and I'm seeing that maybe I don't have time left in the Jam to do all ~4-5 Ages that I had been thinking at the start... and I could put a 'Congrats! You finished this Demo!" at the end of Age I message and spend the next month refining things.
Or maybe I try to do Age II and have that message at the end of Age II...
One reason I kind of want to stick with refining Age I is that I'm struggling with some ideas going forward.
Such as:
Currently, you can buy new elements and they add to your Inventory - but at some point some of the Age I Elements are going to be obsolete... like... once we get to the point where there are Knights and Castles or Cars, etc, the Stone Axe and the Spear, and the Sling should not be around anymore...
How do I get rid of those older Elements? Do I have a technology that just removes them all once you learn it? Do I auto-upgrade them all?
In Luck Be A Landlord (one of my inspirations), you are adding a new Element every spin, and then there are ways to occasionally get a currency that you can spend to delete any item in your collection. Do I implement something like that? I'm just seeing that early on you want to buy lots of Spears to protect your people, but then in Age II when the wild animals become less dangerous (but now you have to deal with Bandits), and you have 10 Spears, but you learn Swords (or whatever)... I don't think I want to just delete all 10 Spears immediately... but I don't think the player wants them all still in their Inventory as they start adding Swords... and I also don't want to instantly upgrade all the Spears into Swords... and I'm seeing this problem being an issue going forward for lots of Techs/Elements...
Anyway, if anyone wants to chime in with some thoughts and/or suggestions, I'd love to hear them!
I might just try to push through some ideas on these Techs and at least work out what should be in Age II before deciding the next step.