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Thanks for the confirmation! I do appreciate it.

This visual bug has been a real bugbear for me. I can't reproduce it myself, and I can't find good information out there on what might be going on. Given how long this bug has been haunting me and how much it degrades some players' experience, I'm going to take that particle effect out of the full version. On the plus side, the overall graphics are getting a big upgrade, so I don't think it'll be missed as much :)

Hey, good timing! I might have finally figured out the source of the bug, but I'm not able to test it myself since I've never been able to reproduce it. Could you download the new update and see if the bug still occurs?

(For the curious, the bug comes from Godot's particle system, which can sometimes cause problems if the particle FPS is lower than the game's FPS and their "Interpolate" flag is set to true. I've updated all particles in the game up from their default 30 FPS to 60 FPS and disabled interpolation, so I'm hoping it works now!)

(This bug has been a thorn in my side for months now, since I can't trigger it on my own.)

Hey, fantastic feedback! I feel like you can see where I want to go with the game :) But I absolutely agree the game needs work. A big reason why I put the game out this early was to start getting feedback from players, smoothing the rough edges, and making sure the moment-to-moment gameplay is satisfying. (When you design a game and already have perfect knowledge of how the systems work together, it's hard to see what is and what isn't obvious when someone only has partial or imperfect knowledge of those. New players, for example.)

I think I want the game to _eventually_ be difficult, but it doesn't need to be as hard at the beginning. There's a few knobs I can turn here - cheaper hero recruiting, more gold from lairs, cheaper trading, etc. I'll think on what I can do here.

Managing hero stress is definitely one of the core 'loops' of gameplay, and right now the player is a little short on ways to affect hero stress. (Building a teahouse or casting the "soothe" spell, I think, are mostly it. Heroes with a "Friends" relationship can also take a relaxing walk together, but that's not something that happens often.) There will be more ways to deal with this in the future, but I think this is one of the tricky design problems I'll have to solve. (The problem, briefly, is that the core loop of managing stress is both a long-term thing and only indirectly affected by player actions. Figuring out how to give good feedback on player actions is tough with those conditions.) I like your idea of a festival! One-time things that trade resources for a little breathing room are cool decisions to force the player to make :D

I'll think about ways to better highlight the default pay rates for different jobs. You can't throw too much text at a new player, or else it all blurs together and information retention plummets. Maybe adding a line to the bottom of the Build Screen could be a nice hint: "Build jobs pay 20 gold per job, set at the Guild Hall" or something like that.

The Explore job refers specifically to going to unexplored tiles, rather than trying to conquer new lairs or maintain already-conquered ones. When a hero goes Questing, they could take an Explore job, a Conquer job, or a Maintain Lair job (or a Kill Monster job, if you've created any of those). Unconquered lairs also have gold inside already, which acts as a sort of "base pay" for the job that can't be modified by the player. Heroes do have a "New Guild Optimism" mood modifier - I could see adding in something where their Wanderlust meter fills up more slowly when they are new. (Once Wanderlust is full, the hero wants to go out on a Quest next.) That would decrease the amount of questing and danger for the first couple of days.

Mana is used to cast spells, which must first be researched. There are three spells in place, but more planned for. Your comment has convinced me to make the Soothe spell available at the beginning. This gives all heroes a mood boost for a day.

I do plan to increase the total number of possible heroes (up to eight, ten, or twelve, not sure yet). I _currently_ have a restriction that you can only hire one hero of each type, though I've considered opening that up. If I do, I won't have to implement another class before increasing the max number of heroes. (Side note: heroes are cheaper if you have fewer employed.)

I plan to go pretty far with relationships. One of my long-term goals is to have crazy things like "necromancer / zombie"  or "betrayer / betrayed" relationships. Shorter term, I'll be adding things like "dude, you just burned down my house" as negative relationship modifiers. If it burns to the ground, then that should be an automatic rivalry. (It's not all doom and gloom. Something like "neighbors" could provide a relationship bonus.)

One of three immediate problems that I'll be working on is what I'm calling the "coordination" problem. You might need three heroes to party up in order to take down a lair (like the Dark Tower). How should I try to get all these heroes to go questing at the same time? The spells Call Home and Call to Adventure can help with this party formation, but that's what I'd consider a "skilled" play (requiring knowledge of how the systems work). More automatically, I've tried to synchronize the sleep schedules for all heroes (even when a hero fills up their sleep need earlier). Then, all heroes are at least starting the day at the same time. More work to be done, though.

(The other big two problems are the "distance" problem, where heroes eventually spend most of the day wondering across the map as you expand outwards, and the "experience" problem, where heroes hired later don't have the benefit of easy early experience provided by exploring unknown tiles. I've got some ideas for these to try out, but I always love hearing more :)

Speed does reset to x1 when a hero is under attack. I could add some small effects to indicate this (maybe a small vignette effect when speed is increased?) and add a "zoom to combat" button to replace the "speed up" button when combat is occurring.

Really, this type of feedback is exactly what I was hoping for! Thanks for helping to make the game better :)

(On a small scheduling note, I've had to pivot focus to Neongarten in January to meet a publishing deadline. I hope to have a small update out by the end of the month (decreasing the difficulty), and a larger one in February.)

Thanks! Eventually, the player will get to pick four of seven or eight possible heroes / classes when they start a new game, and all te heroes will display their personality and (maybe?) a backstory trait or two, somewhat like what Rimworld does. Maybe some cooler artwork during those intro "Hero Decision" screens would be fun too!

Appreciate the kind words :)

Thanks for the feedback. Polishing up that first fifteen minutes of play is always a hard thing to do. (Lots of AAA games get overly hand-holdy about this, so you'll see people online railing against tutorialization for instance.)

Your heroes are always supposed to decide what to do on their own - perhaps that needs to be made clearer. I did add in a quick update to fix the first part of the problem: you can get rid of the sidebar just by clicking somewhere else now.

Might as well be the theme song....

I wanted to post a quick explanation of how I'll be using version numbers for this project. For games that can last a long time (like colony sims!), I know that maintaining save game compatibility is very important.

I'll start off by saying that this is the alpha version of this game. Breaking changes can and will happen, and I will not feel the least bit of guilt about it. (No more than when I design a twisted storylet / hero decision that kills off your Guild, like some coked-out G R R Martin.) But, if I do break things, I want you to know about it ahead of time.

The version number displayed on the title screen will follow this format:
[MAJOR VERSION NUMBER] . [SAVE GAME VERSION NUMBER] [mod?] . [BUILD NUMBER]
So, for instance, the first version I launched just now is version 0.2.1.

If I post an update tomorrow that fixes a bug and doesn't affect the save file at all, that version would be v0.2.2.

If I post an update tomorrow that changes the "starting conditions" of the map, but is compatible with save files from today, then I'll increment the option "mod number" after the save game version number. So, say I add in a new monster and lair type. Those get added to the map at the start of the game. I would call it v0.2b.2. You could still play with a save file from v0.2.1 (since the save file version number hasn't changed), but you wouldn't get the new "start of game" content. C'est la vie.

If I post an update tomorrow that adds on new stats to the Heroes, or something else incompatible with the previous saves, then the new version would be v0.3.2.

So, if the new version has the same save game version number as your save file, then you are good to go!

The googly-eyed wildcard is such a nice touch. *chef's kiss*

Definitely not the visual effects I was going for! Thanks for the bug report. Could you let me know your OS and graphics card?

Oh yeah, that's not something you can come back from. Almost any piece added would be eaten instantly.

Part of that comes from the simple AI I coded up for single player. "Random Randel" doesn't take the board into consideration at all when he plays a move - that's part of the reason he gets such a huge handicap. If you're looking for more of a challenge, try playing him where you don't capture any of his pieces for X turns, or where you don't try to capture his pieces at all.

And the bug has been fixed! A bit later than expected, but life will do that to ya.

I'm glad you enjoy it! Mac support would require paying a $100 development fee, and that's something I'll gladly do if the game gets enough wishlists (say, at least 100) from mac-specific gamers.

My guess - you've got a controller plugged in. There's a bug where if you have one plugged in, the game is assuming you'll be using that. I should have a bug fix out in a week, give or take a couple of days.

"Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!"

Thank you! I tried to keep the game a good mix of strategic depth and approachable play, and I'm glad to hear it resonated with you.

Fixed in the latest update! There were some weird windowed / fullscreen logic to work through, but the latest version accepts Alt+Enter and F11.

There is some small weirdness to note - the game starts off in windowed mode, but if your monitor resolution is 1920 x 1080, then the game will look like it's in full screen mode. It's really windowed, but the title bar is drawn outside the monitor. Working through the weirdness this week.

Thanks for the feedback - that's how the game gets better!

That is one fine-looking bee. Nice job!

I feel jounced. Great work with this game, it feels very kinetic and full of life. No mean task.

Great work on this! The combat feels really great, and the bullets are just the right speed.

I wasn't sure what the color difference with the bullets meant initially. Figured out the green one at first, but missed what the blue ones meant.

Hahaha love the title. Nice little game, it feels like it'd be a great way to have a tiny little competition when you need to figure out who is gonna get the next round.

Fun game! I just started playing Darkest Dungeon - I wonder, did you take any inspiration from that?

On a less fun note, I tried playing this in full screen mode with Firefox. No bueno. Controls weren't responding properly.

Great work! I had fun finding the little pumpkin dude :)

Fixed the stray "adjacent" phrases - but after this week's update. Expect it to be fixed next week!

Thanks for the feedback! Difficulty is a difficult thing to tune, as it turns out. Even more so because it's hard to see your own game with fresh eyes.
My (privacy-friendly) analytics system is telling me that there are about 40 games won to 650 games lost.  Maybe that's a little low? On the other hand, many of those lost games would have been people playing for the first time. Tricky.

At any rate, you've convinced me to add a "Creative" mode to the Steam version! No rent, no deadlines, just building!

That's a good idea - actually hadn't considered that. Maybe you could unlock another block of 4 layers after you beat the normal game. I'd have to consider the player's ability to add more income to lower layers in the stack, but I'm pretty sure I can add 0's onto the end of the tax bill faster than the player could keep up ^.^

Hey, I'm glad you enjoyed it! I've got a bunch of improvements planned for the Steam release. I'll be consulting with a UI artist to improve the basic theme already present and to make the effects of buildings more legible. (I've been playing a ton of Cobalt Core lately, and I think I can take some lessons from their icon language on the cards. Also, go play Cobalt Core.)

I do want to show some indication of affected buildings when you place a new building. I have code in place to do this, but I couldn't figure out a way to make it look good (with the art style's lighting). That's another place where I plan to hire someone for guidance.

As for "adjacent" vs "neighboring", they are the same thing. I thought that the most recent update changed all the "adjacent" text to "neighboring", but I very well could have missed some. The one-screen tutorial page on the title page has a pictorial representation of the different effect patterns, but it's not necessarily an obvious thing to look at.

Thanks for playing! The neon-washed aesthetic was fun to play around with, and gave me a clear vision to shoot for as I made my first 3D / Godot game. Also, cyberpunk is such a fun theme to play with.

Hacker shacks can definitely pay off! They aren't the only way to skip the progression. In fact, I'm trying to build in multiple "game-breaking" combos of buildings.

My current record is a Corp building making 11k in one night! I had to nerf the Security Forces in the most recent update because they were just too powerful. A certain amount of "too powerful" is encouraged, but that building made it too easy. The new update reduces their area of effect, which should play a little better.

The new version is up! I wasn't able to reproduce the rubberbanding / invisible buildings over the weekend, but I'll keep trying.

What monitor resolution were you playing at? Was this fullscreen? Sometimes these things matter. (Also, this is my first project using Godot, so I'm still learning its quirks.)

Camera rotation is in! Q + E, A + D, and Left + Right all rotate the camera. 

That's a good idea. I'll add in a one-screen tutorial in next week's update :)

Thanks for the kind words! I've got some cool ideas for ways to improve the UI and make the onboarding process smoother.

You mentioned coming across a couple of bugs - do you remember what these were? Sometimes, even a description of a bug is enough to fix it. I know of a few, but want to make sure I note any ones I haven't found yet.

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it!

That was fast-paced! Great looks, and it was fun trying to navigate the twisty passageways. Keep up the good work!

I WENT DEEPER! Until I didn't, haha. Had a fun time.

I played a round - love the concept! I felt soooo bad to leave people hanging at the end, haha. Gotta get some practice in for next year's championship!

Hi Krankenheim. Thanks for the support, and especially for the feedback! I appreciate that it takes extra time to write your thoughts down.

First, have you been finding the "plant-o-vision" useful? This is a mode accessed by pressing "F" or "/" on the keyboard or the west button (X / Square) on a gamepad. When this is active, time is paused, and you can cycle through different seeds in your hotkey bar and see how they'd do on different parts of the farm. It will show the green arrows or red arrows for positive / negative growth. It doesn't let you move the player without exiting plant-o-vision mode, but it can let you scope out a good planting location.

I don't think I do a good job tutorializing that feature, but it may help out.

Fun game! I recorded my first 10 minutes with the latest version:

I feel you. I do a book club-style video game podcast with a couple of buddies, and we've all become parents over the last three years. We have to limit ourselves to a couple of longer games each year, and we always enjoy games that will quote-unquote "only" take 5 or 10 hours to get through. We definitely appreciate a game that only takes an hour to say what it wants to say.

Glad you enjoyed this!

This was a great idea - I implemented just that for the Steam Next Fest, and I think it's helping new players get their bearings.