4/5 Fun, 3/5 Balance, 4/5 uniqueness, 3/5 theme.
I really enjoy this. Sorry I don't have a lot of time to write a big writeup.
My only complaint personally is that the balance seems a little off. Some timewalls are a bit too long for my taste. (And I don't mean the "literal" timewalls, but just parts of the game where you sit there for 1-3 minutes waiting.
Those mostly went away but after Iridium they came back again :(
I didn't give this one a full playthrough so I'm not sure if I should rate it. I think this is a good incremental game but I feel like the theme kinda ruins it. I think that the forced resets kill my flow/enjoyment of the game.
Reminds me of kinda like kittens-esque game but a lot faster and not a lot of waiting around (Which is great) but yea the early-forced resets are a turn off to me, and I'm not sure how great the rest of the game fits into the theme anyways.
(I got to 1e4 research/had a 15 minute run which was going well until it ended)
Maybe giving more time crystals would be better? To not make it feel so reset heavy. Not sure.
Interesting. I would say this is like a prototype? You get to the end of the research tree really fast and it seems like rebirthing doesn't do anything regarding unlocking new content. I rebirthed twice but it was just the same run but faster.
Fun: 3/5
Enjoyed it, wish it was longer. I felt like a lot of the upgrades didn't really do anything though.
Balance: 1/5
Balancing of the game seems to make everything fall apart. You just get stock market and then you can get literally infinite money. The stock price isn't random it just fluctuates from 20-60 so with every fluctuation you 3x your money forever. And then manipulation causes that to go to 1, which means you can 60x-100x your money. Anyway after that you get extremely fast research speed and then you research everything.
Additionally, I'm not sure if this is a balancing problem or a me problem but I never used the green or blue upgrades. I just used red until I had like 4 months banked and then I could stop using anything. (Until I wanted to die, then I used amplified red to die fast)
Uniqueness: 5/5
I would say this is a pretty unique TMT game. The upgrade/merging/stuff was pretty cool even if I never used the other two.
Theme: 5/5
I really enjoy this type of game. Sadly the autobuy not being an option has completely ruined it for me. I've stopped playing after unlocking the autobuy even though I want to see the rest of the content.
Fun: 4/5
I think for me this game would be 5/5 if the auto-buy thing didn't happen. For some info about why I despise it so much, I feel like it took away any interactivity I had with the game, everything is just auto-bought. It also removes any choices I could make, such as buying the best upgrades first, everything is just autobought. And finally, I reached a point where I had enough money in a loop to "prestige" but the autobuyer was not allowing me to get it. I think I was making probably around 8k in a loop, and a new city cost 5k but I couldn't actually get it because my money was being spent.
Anyway other than that, I enjoy the pacing of the game, and even if it is fairly linear, I don't have issues with a linear incremental game that has short downtime between upgrades and seeing progress.
Balance: 4/5
Early game felt pretty linear, as stated. Nothing felt too slow though. I like how it started branching off and you could prioritize certain upgrades before the auto-buyer took over, to optimize your money/loop.
Some city upgrades might be a bit too strong/weak compared to others in their row.
Uniqueness: 4/5
I've seen some looping games like this, but I would still say this is fairly unique. Nothing extremely new or anything, but it's not a complete rip off of AD like a lot of games tend to be.
Theme: 4/5
Fits the time theme pretty well in terms of looping time.
Fun: 2/5
I guess this game just wasn't my thing. I felt really rushed at the start so I felt like I didn't have time to read the messages.
Gameplay loop is basically the exact same thing for every tab, so once you've done the first tab you've seen the entire game. This is why I'm rating fun so lowly. Repetition and lack of unique upgrades or anything of that sort.
Balance: 3/5
The first two tabs seemed ok. I would have preferred for more time at the start to be able to read all the messages as they were coming in. Later on you get so much time speed reduction that having an extra few minutes wouldn't really change much except give breathing room.
The later tabs felt pretty slow. Also nitpicking here but the sell 5x/10x didn't work on buying workers, only selling. Had to use the enter trick to buy a lot of workers (Which did speed things up a bit)
Uniqueness: 2/5
Nothing too crazy. I would say the story is unique, not sure if that's theme or uniqueness. As for gameplay mechanics, there wasn't anything super cool going on. Reminded me of Adventure capitalist at the start actually haha.
Theme: 5/5
Very time-oriented.
I want to give every game a complete playthrough haha. I understand that your game is a lot more visual and graphic than most, and to be fair to you, that takes a lot of effort. If there was a score for graphic design/visuals i would give yours a 5 :) I did like the art.
The time limit is def really hard to make a solid experience, hope to see some cool progress and see where you take the game.
Really great idea. I love mouse copy games so this is right up my ally.
Fun 4/5
Really really suffers from no explanation. I didn't even know this was a mouse copy-esque game until like 5 minute in. I kept switching my sands of time around but nothing was happening because I didn't do it in the right order until I figured it out. Some explanation would make this 5/5 imo.
Balance 4/5
Not sure if this falls under balance but it got really hard to create multiple loops due to some loops starting a new red sand while trying to make another new loop. But other then that the game got a lot faster. I eventually maxed out my sands.
Uniqueness 5/5
Very creative! Not much to say here. :)
Theme 5/5
You utilized "time" very well.
Sorry, gonna be pretty blunt here. Rated everything 1/5 Except for theme, 2/5
First off, flaw at the start, no way to mute sound. Should always be an option.
Now regarding gameplay, there is really not a lot going on. Clicking and loading bars. No real upgrades, or anything that I could find. Gold income never meaningfully increased, despite costs skyrocketing up. Why don't future ages have more gold?
Anyway, I'd like to think I made it through the game. Bought the 100k upgrade, I don't think it did anything.
The whole time there was that scroll symbol next to the gold, so either I missed something very important? Not sure. If I did i'll give it a replay and maybe it'll be better.
To sum up all my issues: Bunch of meaningless upgrades (And by meaningless upgrades, I mean things that make the bar look prettier) + clicking little icons as the only gameplay, makes for a boring experience. I wanted to get the 100k thing in case it unlocked the scrolls but I don't think it did anything.
Fun: 4/5
There were some parts of the game where it kinda dragged (grinding PP mostly) Clicking a bunch is also not that fun.
Balance: 3/5
Pacing felt weird with the first few challenges. I mostly grinded 3; that's probably intended since it's idle, but if 4 was more rewarding, I would have focused on that instead of going for idle gains in 3. Also kinda sad it ended at 6
Uniqueness: 4/5
Nothing super new, but speedrunning is cool.
Theme: 5/5
I enjoy the uniqueness but I think this game suffers very much from tab overload so far.
I'm up to gold and I don't see any reason why Tanks / Upgrades / Researches can't all be on the same window instead of having to go back and forth between the three.
Also not sure if game is balanced around holding enter but an option to simulate holding enter would be preferrable
Edit: finished the game. Still agree with what I said above. Appreciate that the game had a concrete ending, was fun
