((Please excuse my essay; I got really excited thinking about this.))
First off, this is really cute and a robust start to a game. I really enjoyed it for the first two in-game months and was deeply engaged, but after that, the game doesn’t yet have much replay potential. The first round (the tutorial) was engaging because I was learning how the game worked and trying to stay alive. The second was fun because I had learned the system and could strategize how to best play. However, with my strategy set, the game was reduced to resource trawls and picking a new direction to look for artifact boxes. So then I went to work building my ideal moon base, and that was fun for a while. But at that point, the game no longer motivated me because there wasn’t much new to try.
That’s why I’m so glad that this game is still in development! I really want to love this game, and I hope the development team have some great things coming. (Props to you for building this, I’m sure I can’t fully appreciate the work you’ve already put into it.)
The easiest way I can think of to add cumulative progress to what you already have is to introduce a Settlement game mode. Instead of being a scientist on a research mission, you’re the first settler building a new space colony! You set up a self-sustaining base before building a signal tower and letting the orbiting space cruiser know that they can take a family out of cryostasis to come and live on the surface. Then, you move on to another patch of dirt a set distance from your last base and start building a new one. You can go back to old bases to refill your oxygen and see the families thriving (parents and their kittens in space suits!! So cute!). Eventually, when all the settlers are living on the planet’s surface, you can join up with other scientists to build the technology to terraform the planet.
This would provide motivation for longer gameplay without having to add many new features, but unfortunately, it would not improve the gameplay experience, which would still be focused largely around collecting resources. One of the upcoming features listed on Trello, cyclical weather, could potentially be expanded into different seasons; each season makes certain things more challenging, but may have a benefit to your settler as well. You could also introduce different biomes on the planet: large areas whose terrain and features were different, forcing you to change your gameplay strategy. For example, maybe there is a forest biome, where the trees grow so thickly that you have to constantly cut them down to clear a space for your base and paths to walk on to reach resources. Seasons and biomes together could create numerous combinations of challenges to keep gameplay more varied.
While it will be more labor-intensive, I hope that you will also work to improve the existing mission-oriented gameplay. Here are some things I think the game needs eventually: more robust incentives (for research, for mission deadlines, etc.), cumulative progress beyond one mission, and differences in the environment that will force us to change our gameplay strategy.
1. Urgency – several other players say they enjoy the really calm atmosphere of the game, and I’d love for there to be a play mode that preserves that experience for them (Settler Mode!). But to me, the general lack of stakes makes the late stages of the game feel tedious. The mission ends after a month, but there’s no rush to leave. In fact, leaving functionally means that you lose all your progress and have to start over. That disincentivizes me from blasting off!
Ideas: What if the end of the mission actually was a deadline? If you don’t blast off on day 30, you’ll miss your ride—the planets will move apart in their orbits, or the space hanger you were supposed to rendezvous with will chug along to the next planet, and you’ll be stuck there overwinter. The planet’s days will get shorter, and the weather will worsen. Maybe you’ll even be plunged into a month-long night when the plants can’t grow, and you’ll have 5 days to stockpile supplies to wait out the dark. You can choose to stay for scientific reasons, but the gameplay will be more challenging.
2. Progression of gameplay mechanics – currently, every mission is identical. You lift off from one planet, and are set down on another indistinguishable planet to start over. Collect the same resources, find the same artifacts, build the same tech. I’d love for the game to acknowledge your progress in some way. Naturally, as you spend research points to build better gear, the difficulty of the game is reduced as you automate the less interesting chores. So, add a new mechanic to challenge the player with each new mission. That way, your strategy will have to continuously evolve.
Ideas: The thing I want most from this game is more cats. I’d love to get a new crew member with every mission I completed, to be capped at 4 to 6 cats total. You couldn’t play as the additional cats, but you could direct them to do certain tasks, like collect grass, repair the base, or keep the garden, for the next 6 hours while you were out looking for artifacts-- or you could send them to search for the artifacts instead! Basically, they would allow you to delegate whatever you liked least so you could focus on the part of the game you found most engaging, and on the newest planet mechanic. The crew would return to the base when their oxygen reached its halfway point, but you would have to check back in on them to change their task or make them eat. Also, this would allow for death to become more permanent: if your cat were to die, you could move to playing as the next oldest cat.
Other players have suggested adding monsters to shoot. However, as a research team, I think you should be constrained to non-violent self-defense; you have no idea whether these alien life forms are sentient, and don’t want to ruin your first shot at diplomacy! So, you have to build technologies to protect yourself and your base, like walls to keep out critters, sound cannons to scare them away, food cannons to bait them away, stink bombs, etc. Different technologies would work on different aliens, so you would have to learn about what was on the planet and strategize. More advanced tech and more complicated creatures could be found as you progress to higher missions. There could be giant naked mole rats that will burrow under your base and break lots of modules if you don’t sink a sonic tool into the earth to deter them. Carnivorous plants could grab you and your crew mates it they stray too near and try to digest them, and you have to assign one cat to weed them up when they’re still small to keep them clear of the base. Eventually, you may come across aliens so intelligent that you can trade and make an alliance with them (dogs?).
Geography could also become more hostile. I love the ideas Steve already has listed for gradual damage to the base and more disasters like fires and meteor showers (and a water biome? Alien ruins? Yes please!). Here are a few more ideas. As you progress, you might get farther from your system’s sun and have less daylight each mission, until you have a mission in total darkness, where no plants can grow, and you have to harvest slime molds to eat or grow all your own food instead. Or, you could venture into a new system and get a planet that is baked in constant daylight, and you have to bury your base and build air-conditioned suits to keep your crew cool. You could land near the mouth of a lava tube on a desolate moon; your starter base is above ground, but the rest of the base is built into the tube. Some resources, like ice, scrap metal, grass, and wood, are only found above ground, and you have to fight through constant, howling winds to find them. The rest of the resources, the artifacts, and alien life forms are found below ground in the lava tubes. There could be a planet with active volcanoes and lava flows, forcing you to build buggies early and pack up your mobile moon base to keep moving to new areas.
3. Progression of archeology – I don’t think this game needs a “plot” per say, but I do want some motivation to find artifacts beyond research points. As the game is now, there’s no reason to keep finding artifacts once you’ve built all the technology you find useful. You can address this for a while by adding new tech to build, but you’ll just be pushing the problem back. The research isn’t really about scientific discovery; it’s a consumable resource. And after a while, going out to find another box gets boring. I want there to be some exigence. If I find a higher number of unique artifacts, will I get more grant money and therefore a bonus starter item for my next mission? That way, I have a reason to find more artifacts even if I don’t need any more research points.
Ideas: The artifacts you are finding in the game currently are items enjoyed by house cats. What if your civilization is one line of descent from these original spacefaring cats? You are following the trail of a different branch of your family tree, lost to time in the vast expanses of space. The artifacts you find aren’t just trinkets, but are a simple puzzle that points you in the direction the cats went next. You collect these clues, and when you complete your mission, you are given three planets to choose from for your next mission. If you interpret the clues correctly, you will progress towards the other cats, following the trail of artifacts as they become more foreign and complex. The puzzles will get harder as you go; maybe rather than just sticking the artifact in the research machine, you have to solve a puzzle to open the box first. If you aren’t fond of puzzles, you can assign one of your other crewmates to work on it for a while and solve it for you. If you follow the other civilization successfully for many missions, you will eventually find one of their colonies, establishing diplomatic contact for the first time in eons between your two civilizations.
These are of course just ideas and suggestions; you are free to use or ignore them. Thank you for this fun game, and I will definitely be checking in periodically to see how it grows! =^-^=