such a satisfying incremental game! the balance is really good so the game feels really fun, so it can be beaten in ~1h ^^
yes, the Star upgrade is effectively impossible to max out (not like it matters)
also the Deliver time upgrade doesn't fully reset on prestige, so you can't get instant deliver time after the first prestige (not like it matters either)
a near-perfect implementation of what most people thought when hearing the theme of the jam
[strategy/balance discussion ahead]
the overall gameplay is quite fun at the start and stays fun for a good time. I only had an issue with the prestige, really!
the problem is the reset feels quite harsh, there is no explanation of what it does (gives you production-boosting "gears" that can be added to either paper or wood) and I felt unrewarded after deciding to prestige with less than 10XP and losing all my progress save for a ~40% production boost to one of the items.
some suggestions to address those:
1. make prestige xp rewards more useful and more diverse
2. have a minimum xp requirement for prestiging (or suggest a recommended minimum somewhere)
I wish there was one last extra upgrade at the end of the game though, the last 20% are too grindy to get without an auto-clicker. the first 80% is nice since there's always a new tier of upgrades that brings a big speed-up, so a single upgrade past the 1.4M one would be enough for that to carry you up to the 100% ^^
nice clean game, I like the idea behind the mechanics! balance-wise, it's a bit weird-
[strategy/balance discussion ahead]
the mechanics are neat overall, but there seems to be no encouragement for long runs that actually use money to buy upgrades.
ceramic increases logarithmically with funds and with the square root of pressure.
this means just a bit of money already yields plenty of ceramic: making just a few hundred $ and then prestiging asap gives ceramic very fast, letting you buy the Distillation Column upgrades, and since each upgrade lets you go into higher pressure before blowing up, you'll get more ceramic each time.
overall there is a bit of a balance issue as raw products serve only one purpose: making money, which, due to the strategy above, doesn't help to progress in the game much. but I believe with some rebalancing, a few more upgrades and better tying the money/production/processing part to the overarching progress and prestige parts of the game, it could be really fun!
a mix of many interesting incremental mechanics in a way that doesn't feel very overwhelming. the prestige mechanic is pretty cool once you find out how it works, it's great when games have more "immersive" mechanics.
the game itself is not complicated, but this version from the jam is a bit hard to comprehend as there aren't many explanations '^^
ye I do that a lot too, start a jam entry way too late and end up rushing quite a bit '^^) you still pulled it off pretty well👌
you mentioned a lot of what I thought of while playing, like "shouldn't dodging have i-frames" was literally a thought I had so they're probably all good ideas xD
