TLDR - The game tackles one of the most commonly under-represented elements of incremental games - the UI - but at the sacrifice of derivative gameplay mechanics and lacking, extended playability. This leaves a pleasing looking game, but one that is not very fun to play. There is promise that additional focus on adding unique game mechanics could make this a classic.
- Fun - 3 / 10
- Novelty - 3 / 10
- Replayability - 1 / 10
- Gameplay Mechanics - 2 / 10
- Progression Balance - 7 / 10
- Style / UI - 5 / 10
- Creativity / Story - 3 / 10
- GJ Theme Adherence - 10 / 10
- QA (Bugs) - 7 / 10
And now some comments on a few of these scores…
Creativity / Story
The theme is fairly unique, focusing on building pressure for …rich person space reasons, but the rationale for why and the story of the game is fairly one-dimensional. Not entirely unexpected for a game jam, but there is tremendous opportunity to create an unfolding plot and motivation for the user in future development.
Gameplay Mechanics
The game introduces the MacGuffin of gas as the stand-in item of increment and does not stray from it. It seems like most time spent during the jam was likely spent on the UI, which left the mechanics extremely derivative of so many other “pump and dump” incremental games, copying from cookie clicker, AdCap, etc, but with less playability. There is a reason why some of the most popular Incremental games on the market forego design for creative mechanics (A Dark Room, Candy Box, etc…).
The tie-in of temperature, and this pressure, to the mechanic of encouraging user interaction provides some alleviation to the copy-paste style of the mechanics; however, at the end of the day, the game mechanics are a carbon copy of nearly every other basic clicker game.
The game could easily be replicated in basic spreadsheet software in a matter of minutes, which should be a challenge to the developer to stress creativity and uniqueness in their game mechanics.
Style / UI
This is where development time was clearly mostly spent - with the visualization of pressure being both unique and pleasing. It does stop at the first door you come to, unfortunately, with no other visuals, UI, or design elements coming into play at any time, even when additional gameplay elements like Heat come into play, which is a major lost opportunity.
The interface itself is your standard button upgrade and click target - per the basic mechanics mentioned above. It does seem to work well on both PC and Mobile, although there are some bugs with upgrade buttons overlapping and becoming unpressable as well as level numbers disappearing - at least on mobile (iOS, Firefox).
Fun (Summary)
The game is fine - it’s a carbon copy clicker you’ve played dozens of times before from game jams. There is a saving grace with the concept of heat building pressure to increase user interaction, but that is the apex of any novelty brought to the genre with the submission. The developer clearly has talent in building web animations, and should continue to expand their skill set into theme building and put some major thought into creating unique game mechanics that revolve around them.