itch.io

There is the new "AI generation disclosure" option, but what is exactly covered by this? For some cases this is clear to me (AI generated images & text), but what is with cases like:

• machine translations (nowadays they are based on LLMs)
• text to speech (based on AI)
• AI opponents based on neural networks
• spell/grammar checking by LLMs for in game texts
• use of copilot coding assistents based on LLMs (Github copilot etc.)

Is there an extensive list what needs to be tagged as "generative AI used"?

I revisited this and now played all available levels. Here some additional findings:

What I like

• The graphics style
• The user interface is intuitive and easy to learn
• Game pacing is well done, I play all the time as 1x and it is flowing well

Things that could be improved

• Add more variation to the levels:
  • There is no much difference if you have to send 4 or 10 bunnies to space
  • The rocket is rather cheap, I was able to build and launch it always on the 2nd day
  • Maybe add upgrades to the rocket: Level 1 has only 4 seats, upgrade for additional seats
• I had no need for the different tower types, maybe add more versatile enemies that require certain towers to counter

Issues I encountered

• Once I was stuck in the night, speed was at 4x and nothing happened. I had to leave and load again to make it continue
• When choosing the tower type it is not checked that there is enough wood, I got negative wood once
• Upgrades sometimes seem to be stuck, then suddenly they have very fast progression

I tried out the recent version. I like the improvements. The 16x speed is cool, but maybe always reset it to 1x at the begin of the battle. I tried again the "basic rocket launcher", it still does not work. When I click it, it is not attached to the mouse so I cannot mount it on a hardpoint.

Many thanks, great feedback!

I will work on the improvements you suggested for the next update.

Regarding the resource cap: Actually there is a "soft"-cap. When you have more harvesters gathering at the same place the efficiency drops. When you closely look at the stats at the end of your game you can see, that at 11 minutes you have only half of the harvesters of the AI but 90% of the income. What you did was much more efficient than what the AI did. The resources are also limited, it is just not visible in the game. I have to improve that.

Wow, many thanks! That is very helpful. Really cool to see someone play the game for the first time. Gave me a lot of ideas for improvements.

Hi, I played your game and I see some potential here!

But I also found some things that I think could be improved:

• Add some ambient noise. When I clicked the first thing that made a sound It caught my by surprise - very unnatural if there is not at least some sound floor.
• The battles are a bit lengthy, and it felt not so important to watch them. It is not possible to affect the outcome, and I had to "farm" materials for a lot of matches to improve my ship, so it was not really necessary to watch them for learning either. Maybe add some interactivity, allow more the 4x speed or make resource farming faster so that there is more building than fighting
• I could not figure out how to place the rocket launcher, I tried everything but was not able to mount it to my ship

I hope this helps a bit. Keep up the good work!

I restarted the tutorial a few times, but I was not able to reproduce the problem. Seems not to be a serious issue.

Another thing is: I do not really understand why I need a fire? The tutorial tells it helps to see enemies, but the night is not very dark. My impression was, that defenses also work without fires. Maybe make the night darker? Make it more "spooky" when there are no fires?

If you have time you could take a look at https://crashdumpsoftware.itch.io/crits it is a feedback trade extension for itch.io. It was probably a dumb idea by me, but would be nice if you could take a look, maybe import one of your projects, an give your opinion.

If that is not your cup of tea: The game I am currently working on is https://crashdumpsoftware.itch.io/epsilon-indi . I had no feedback since the last update ... so feedback would be useful as well.

Honestly I do not really understand which "gap" your site fills, that is not already covered by itch.io? Maybe you could explain it in a bit more detail ...

Hi,

i played the first 5 levels of your game. This is what I found:

• I had a bug in the tutorial where the next step was not triggered at some point. When it continued are had already built almost everything. But it was not really a problem as I found the controls intuitive, I had no problem to figure everything out even without explanations.
• Regarding the "pacing": I never had any downtime at all. I always went for a very economic build: get a lot of carrots & workers first. Then build defenses as late as possible. That worked out well without any downtime.
• Difficulty: I found it too easy. I mostly managed to launch the rocket on day 2. So I had only to defend 1 night. And those fights were never even close. I never built any walls, never upgraded the fire. I just built 3 sniper towers and upgrade them. That was more than enough.
• UX/Controls: Very good, everything is intuitiv and easy to understand
• What you could improve: allow to adjust the difficulty, maybe a global setting to hard/very hard mode: more enemies, more waves, more versatile enemies that need different treatment (like swarms of small enemies that need splash towers).
• Graphics: I like it, bunnies are cute :)

I hope that helps a bit.

I created a prototype for an alternative ranking of projects. Not by "popularity" but by "need for feedback". If you need feedback and you are willing to give feedback in exchange, you can try it out here: www.crits.top

There is also a itch.io page explaining the details: https://crashdumpsoftware.itch.io/crits

I think such a ranking could be useful on itch.io for projects that are in development and need some feedback, but are not mature enough to climb up the usual ranking by popularity.

That is how the ranking looks right now:

(sadly there are only two of my own projects in the list right now, but if someone is willing to add his project, I will update the screenshot :) )

Dear developers,

I am developing games as a hobby and I do not have a relevant amount of followers. That is totally fine most of the times, but sometimes I would like to get some feedback. In the past I waited for an appropriate game jam to trade feedback. That worked great, but is not always available. An alternative is this forum, but that does not work as well in my experience. (For instance: I wrote the first version of this post ~24 h ago, and no one even tried it out ...)

Then I had this idea: What if there was a ranking of games on itch.io that ranked not by "popularity" but by "is in need for feedback the most".  To test it out I created a prototype that ranks projects like this: Those developers that gave more feedback than they received are ranked to the top. With that ranking it should be possible to trade feedback in a large pool, but not only "one on one".

What do you think of that Idea?

If you need feedback yourself and are willing to give feedback to others in return it would be great if you would add your project to the ranking. (As an extra bonus: I will do extensive reviews on the first 5 games that are put on the list.)

You can take a look at the prototype here: crits

There is also an itch page: https://crashdumpsoftware.itch.io/crits

It would also be great if you could give feedback on the prototype itself: How is the usability? Did you find the button to rank your project up? Is the mechanic clear? What feature is missing? What do you think about the surveys? What about the ratings?

You have to add a collider and a rigidbody to your gameobject. Disable "UseGravity" and "IsKinematic". Under constraints set all rotations to freeze.

Attach a script that simulates the physics you want. For example:

public class Bounce : MonoBehaviour
{
    private Vector3 _initialPosition;
    private Rigidbody _rigidbody;
    void Start()
    {
        _initialPosition = gameObject.transform.position;
        _rigidbody = GetComponent<Rigidbody>();
    }
    void Update()
    {
        var force = 50 * (_initialPosition - gameObject.transform.position);
        var damping = -5 * _rigidbody.velocity;
        _rigidbody.AddForce(force + damping, ForceMode.Force);
    }
}

Many thanks for your feedback! I will try to make the learning curve a bit less steep in the next update. The current AI is putting so much pressure that there is no room for experiments ... not the best choice for the first level I must admit :)

Many thanks for your feedback. I will add more versatile AI opponents, with different strategies and difficulties, in the next update. And hopefully also a tutorial.

The buggy rush is really hard to stop. I will put another AI as the first level. What helps to defend is: 

• sync up production when you have more than one factory
• sacrifice some hitpoints on buildings. If balanced right, it is possible to tech-up, keep your buildings alive, and defend with one less factory than the opponent has
  

Thanks for your feedback! I will work on a tutorial and improve the singleplayer in the next update. Actually the units have different color (black or white parts), but you are not the first one that complained that they don't. I think it is not noticable enought - I will try to improve that!

It is possible to write reviews before the votings starts ... and then people forget to come back later to give there vote. Maybe that happended to you.

I joined a few jams now. It is always like that: Only a minority of the participants are doing reviews and votes.

No I have not yet put any effort in that. I first would like to have a game that is worth promoting. And I got a lot of feedback here, that will keep me busy for a few weeks ... :)

Thanks for the feedback! I am glad you liked it. Teleporting should not happen, that is probably a performance issue in the web-version. I will add a setting, so that the graphics details can be reduced in the browser version.

The scout just moves quickly around to give vision to the map - currently not very useful I must confess. But that should change in the future.

When the construction facility is destroyed, it cannot be rebuild. In theory it is still possible to win, but very unlikely. Maybe you are right and I should let the match end when it is destroyed.

Many thanks for the valuable feedback and that you took so much time!

Your suggestions are very good, I definitively will keep them in mind. I am planning to tackle the "rush"-problem in the next release. And you are right: The builder-bot ist not working as intended, I will fix that.

A nice game. Feels very smooth, good controls and a nice concept. I saw that other complained that it was to easy, but not for me! I guess I am just not very good at jump-and-runs.

One thing that confused me is the time limit becoming negative...

From the developer point of view I find this interesting.

But from a players point of view it is not that interesting: As a player I do not care about the mathematics, I just run around, collect what I can and expect that everything is "solvable". I do not care how the develper achieved that it is always solvable.

I think you have an interesting alorithm you can build upon. But for the game to be really interesting to play I think you have to add a bit more. What you could try is to add several minigames to make the journey more interesting. Ideas are:

- Replace the signs by NPC that have to be persuaded to provide the information

- Make fights interesting

Thanks for your review. You are totally right. I did not update the AI after I added upgrades and new units. Based on the feedback I got so far I decided to improve the single player experience by creating different AIs that use different strategies.

The tank looks nice and the controls for the camera are fine. What you could improve are the controls for placing plants and stones: Instead of the x,y,z arrows it would be nice if I could move plant with the mouse along the ground surface (adjust the height automatically). For the other props (wood & stone) it could be nice if they could just be dropped and are then placed via a physics simulation using colliders.

I had a bug once where one of the fish was trapped outside of the tank.

Many thanks for your feedback. That are some good ideas. I will definitely do something about the "buggy spam problem" in the next release! Thank you!

This game has a nice concept. I like it.

Tutorial: The tutorial is good. It does a good job to introduce the different mechanics while still offering some gameplay already.

Difficulty: It is way to high! The first level after the tutorial is totally overwhelming. I would suggest that you have a level system with a slow increase of difficulty. Especially I would put much less items, curses, etc. in the first levels.

Graphics: Simple, but nice.

Other: It is not so easy to keep track of the 3 resources (time, energy, and life). I might be helpful to visualize the effect of equipment, consumables & curses on these values. Maybe also show the current effect of a move on these resources, taking into account the effect of all equipments & curses. Or even a "moves left" counter that shows the available moves when nothing changes.

Thanks for your feedback!

"a tutorial is super important"

I guess you are right on that. I avoided it, because it does not seem much fun to implement. I will raise the priority of it ...

"It was really frustrating when I couldnt move my construction bot"

I get your point, but I have no solution yet. Maybe it is a fundamental flaw in my concept that might be difficult to overcome. Adding direct control over units would bring me into the realm of "normal RTS", a world where I cannot compete.

"if I dont immediately and constantly invest in buggies I still feel like I am going to just lose even if that is not the case"

I think that is a similar problem as the point above: A fundamental flaw of the concept. In fact spamming buggies is a bad strategy. It just "feels" strong. The behaviour of the buggies gives enough advantage to the defender, so that defending and expanding/teching can be done. If there where a "metagame" I think no one would rush with buggies. Maybe I could ease out this problem by changing the behaviour of the AI to not only focus on buggies. (Actually I did not update the AI after adding upgrades and new units.)

"multiplayer is really tough to pull off for any indie dev"

That is true. But there is a glimpse of hope: There are multiplayer RTS on Itch that have an active player base. For instance "Tzared Online" or "Little Wargame" always have active players. But they are ranked on Itch even below my game. Which is ridiculous. So those players are clearly not coming from Itch. I think Itch has a good community to get feedback like yours ... but you will not find any players for multiplayer RTS here. So I think it makes sense to get early feedback here ... and if I every reach a point where I think the game could be fun I will move to a platform for multiplayer games.

I just started it again and found out that you replaced the mercenaries with towers and drones ... not sure if they have the same issues I had with the mercenaries ...

Wow this is a great improvement over the last version I tested! You solved all the issues I had with the previous version, without sacrificing the basic concept (permadeath, etc.). The different options of retreat, along with the choice to sell ore early or not, creates meaningful decisions. Overall the mecanic feels very balanced now.

The only thing which felt a bit underpowered to me are the mercenaries. It never felt like a good idea to invest into them. Maybe there is a theoretical window where it makes sense to hire mercenaries to complete a mission that otherwhise would fail, but that is very hard to predict. Maybe you could make them cheaper so that there is always the question "How many mercenaries should I hire?". Or they come with increasing prices.

Overall the game is really fun!

Pretty cool game! I took me some tries to beat the 700, but I did it! (I played the v2 version)

The game is already fun, and feels complete.

Things you may consider:

• Furter improve the controls, sometimes it is hard to hit an exact spot
• The maze goes rather quickly from super easy (~800) to impossible (~1000). Maybe you could ease that out a bit. One idea could be to allow infite bombs, but make them more expensive every time (maybe -10, -20, -30, ...).
• You could change the algorithm so that at some point the maze gets more complicated, but does not block completety: Not only add walls but also remove others, so that the path to the exit becomes longer but still exists. (I am aware that this may be very difficult.)

Many thanks for trying it out. Both (a tutorial and a single player campaign) are on my list. But I am still not sure if I will be able to do it in the next release ... especially a campaign would be a lot of work.

Many thanks for your feedback! And of course it is influenced by Starcraft, I also played that a lot. :)

That is not a standard approach. If you need dynamic lights, you are probably better of with dynamic lighting. But if you want to mess with the lightmaps, then you can access them via the LightmapSettings-Class:

var lightmaps = LightmapSettings.lightmaps;
lightmaps[0].lightmapColor = new Texture2D(256, 256, TextureFormat.ARGB4444, false);
LightmapSettings.lightmaps = lightmaps;

This code will replace the color component of the lightmap with a black texture.

When you bake lighting, a single lightmap is generated for all your lights and your static game objects. i.e. there is no easy option to turn these lights on and off. Probably you can do some hacky solution like replacing the entire lightmap with a completely black lightmap at runtime. There is no standard Unity feature for that. Static lightmaps are just not meant to be used for dynamic lighting ...

It was easy to understand what to do. But I have difficulties to understand the mechanic: How do I generate food? I have build food storages, but still sometimes food dropped low and I did not know what to do about it. I build a lot of stuff and explored 3 biomes but I did not manage to reach 50 population. Maximum was actually 49 :).

In the end my food dropped to -20 (sic!) and my population to 0. I did not understand why. I had a lot of houses, storages and wells.

I found some issues:

• food can drop below 0
• zooming works, but it would be nicer if the zoom direction would be in the view direction
• build/terraform buttons are not really necessary, I would rather have both menus open all the time anyway
• when clicking on buttons, the click goes through to the tile underneath so both actions are triggered

Overall I like the look and feel. For a first prototype really nice!

Hi I gave it a try:

• For me the progression feels too slow
• When spending essence it always drops to 0. Maybe it is by design, but it feels like a bug.
• Upgrade costs are sometimes shown as 0. But the correct amount is charged.
• Music/SFX did not work for me

But it looks interesting! I am curious where it will end up... :)

You could think about creating a "Accessible Games Jam". Explane what disabilities you are aiming for and what are potential accessibility features. You could aim for new games with accessible features, or making existing games more accessible, or both ...

I think there are a lot of developers on itch that are willing to try out something new. But I think that it is important that you give some guidance: For the current project I am working on I have no idea how to make it more accessable (except for color-blind mode).

Many tanks for your feedback and suggestions. I will improve the coloring, and will add a tutorial eventually.

I am glad that you liked it. I will continue working on it to add more versatile gameplay. Many thanks for your feedback!

Many thanks that you did such and extensive test! That is very useful feedback for me. Not having a queue for unit production was a design decision, but you are probably right, not a good one. I will add a queue in the future. I will put improving zoom and sound on my list as well.

I really like this one! If there where more levels I would have continued playing. I think with all the character in the game you have enough to build very challanging levels. So my preference would be to add more levels instead of new mechanics. Maybe you could think about letting the player choose the difficulty: tutorial (basically what you have right now, but a bit easier),  easy, medium, hard, ...

Another Idea could be to create a random level generator that can create levels of different difficulty ... than you would not have to create them all by hand. But I am not sure how realistic that is...