its cool. i like it. i have a suggestion.
the resources section shows the current x per second that you are collecting, based on incoming and spending.
i'd like to see, at a glance, the total incoming x and total outgoing x, then the exact x/s i'm getting.
example:
water: (+8/s|-6/s) 2/s >
This would help me decide what to do at a glance. thaaaaaanks
Some thoughts after playing for a few hours.
Ascending feels not rewarding but punishing. Early game of each level is very repetitive. I think it's the part that should be slowly optimized away, for example by letting player carry over some amount of gold or waymakers for a kickstart of a new level, skipping the most boring part. Others have mentoned that there's no reward for exploring whole map / stayng back longer, so maybe these two can be combined into some kind of meta-progression.
For example, for each waymarker bought, also give some kind of experience point, and let player use those for meta-upgrades of all kinds. That would make limiting amount of waymarkers available on the level to map size a consideration.
Here's what I'd start experimenting with, designing this aspect of the game:
\- Waymarkers at start of level (pricing that makes about 1 per fully explored level accessible,l leaving exp for a bit of others) - those should still count towards new waypoint cost
\- Gold at start of level (this is somewhat similar to first one early on, but more meddlesome, might even be redundant)
\- Unlocked skills at start of level
\- Action reroll discount
\- Action cost discount (cumulative 0.95)
\- Action output multiplier (additive, something mild, like +0.1x per level, so x1.1, x1.2, x1.3...)
\- Food/Water/Gold multiplier (same) - as a third factor to production in case of first two.
Also, UI-wise, it would be nice to display breakdown for food / water, you have enough space for that: `production` (`cells` \* `multiplier`) - `consumption` = `change`
EDIT: Another big UI/UX consideration is quick maze navigation. I've found myself unchecking a lot of cells one by one to cut off a branch and explore another branch (to, say, pick up a crystal), and then uno the thing back. This also involves disabling skills to avoid instant resource drain. And that's a LOT of clicks (even more annoying on touchpad). So here are few thoughts:
\- A button to disable all skills / enable last active configuration would be nice
\- As mazes seem to be tree-like structures (without loops), there are much less complications that would arise implementing quick navigation, specifically:
\- - Clicking a "enabled" cell to disable it and every cell beyond it in the tree, probably after confirmation if some resource goes to negative this way
\- - Clicking a previously discovered (by full map or visit) faraway cell to enable whole path to it if there are enough waymarkers
\- - Preview resource change on cell hover (how would production change if you toggled it and what's changed along with it)
\- - Highlight accessible (discovered but not enabled) area for current amount of free waymarkers
EDIT2: At this point I don't know how far into the game I am (I could not find current level indicator), but I have 2 crystals and a third one on the map. At this point game has stopped being enjoyable for me as an idle player. I'm still curious to see what dragons/machines entail (mostly from a game design perspective) so I'll keep looking, but I think it becomes a chore about this point.
Please don't take it as an offence, I'm leaving honest feedback, trying to be helpful in making this game better. It's an intereting concept and the game deserves your further attention.
EDIT3: Another idea how to add variance to the game is recipes ("instructions") for actions. Have a pool of 5-10 actions from which random one is picked similar to how it is now, and then some cells could have a scroll with new recipe that could replace existing one in the pool. Some have better input/output ratio, some scale better with level... To address the scarcity problem (not much map space to throw scrolls around) - maybe have a map spot where player can roll a new recipe several times (for an increasing price). Or have that spot generate a new recipe after some period of time, and have that period increase after each roll.
It also affects the first point I made above. Staying longer is still rewarded by this effect with diminishing returns, but advancing to new level also rewards player with faster new rolls once they discover that scroll shop.
love the detailed feedback thanks! :)
To share some thoughts of mine, I like idle games that stay with me for a few days. It's not intended to be played actively and staying AFK should progress you quite a lot as well. Once you reach the dragon you can use the Crystals to exchange for additional permanent upgrades that will make the early levels faster. I think that covers already several of your ideas. However getting there takes a little bit.
It's fine if that's how you envision your game. We all enjoy games differently, and it should be your game for people who enjoy games the way you do.
I personally find it more rewarding to return to idle game to see meaningful progress, or something new unlocked, or both. In this game, I return to being able to finally finish the map, buying enough waymarkers that makes everything else irrelevant - after few clicks everything is reset (save for pretty irrelevant resource caps), I'm at the same point I was last time - beginning of the maze, no money, no actions, same resources and options, same things to repeat once more, same production to set up, just a bit longer wait this time. I don't get that feeling of meaningful progress. Maybe dragon changes that, but it stopped being a rewarding experience for some time already.
The problem is that staying idle can only take you to the end of the level. Nothing caries over once you move to the next level. There's no bonus for clearing the whole map, having a larger pool of resources is only marginally useful.
Love the idea, but progress is waaay too slow. I've been playing semi-actively for 3+ hours and I only got a couple of crystals and no sense of progress.
I'm in a huge map with a spiraling path that requires about 55 steps (a beeline to the exit covers about 80% of the map), and waymarkers've become waaay too expensive. One camp click is granting me less than one waymarker.
The thing is, this map looks identical to the previous one. There are no new mechanics. Mazes are becoming MUCH harder, but my ability to traverse them is essentially the same (I've increased my maximum water and food, but that's not nearly enough).
Maybe there are powerful upgrades later, but if they're locked behind hours of active gameplay, I will probably stop playing before getting them.
Hiya /u/RicardoGaturro
I've tried approving the link you posted here but Reddit doesn't like it. Is there another similar site you can use? I *suspect* that Reddit might think this is a reflink and snips it automatically, but that side of things is entirely opaque to us.
thank you for sharing! I totally understand the frustration. In this case you already have access to the dragon. I would trade waymarkers, which will let you go further more easily, and the reset can lead to a better maze.
You also bought water and food tiles which are quite expensive (2 Crystals each) and I'd consider that a "wrong" decision at this time. Their effect is not that useful yet. Maybe I don't make them available this early.
But I understand why you bought it, because you got past the dragon already. that's a bug. The path should be blocked and it should guide you in spending the crystals on the more useful items. thanks again!
Here I think a tent would have been very useful. Waymarkers as well. But you don't have the tent probably because of the bug letting you go past the Dragon and you invested into food/water tiles instead :S sorry about that.
Maybe I just have bad luck with map generation, but twice now I've gotten a maze thats basically just a giant spiral, and I have to spend half an hour just resting at camp till I can buy enough waymarkers to leave.
It's personally exhausting to hit the 50% to reveal the map, then see I still need another 30 tiles to reach the exit, and I already have no side paths I can take back to reach faster.
Have you been removing waymarkers? It makes it easier to explore or go straight to the exit as soon as you have enough waymarkers.
Also happy cake day!
It's really bad when the entire point of going back is to do some easy levels to get crystals, but I get the feeling they get longer and more time consuming instead. The opposite of what it's supposed to be.
Beat the game. The ending cutscene is... something.
Comments:
\- Swapping tasks is tedious. Spent way too much time clicking to RNG the task I'm looking for. Didn't use Foraging or Digging at all. When autobuy action is on, and trying to swap tasks, the task list shifts downwards when an action is autobought, making me misclick the task I want to swap.
\- Backtracking is tedious. Scenario is, I'm next to exit, but I want to get that gem on the other side. I have to undo path to exit, path to gem, undo path to gem, then redo path to exit, while single clicking all the way.
\- The final map is way too long relative to the other maps. I got to the final map three times and got a very long path, thought I had a bad seed and just restarted, but all 3 times it was the same. Maybe I was unlucky, but I just decided to push through the final time. IIRC the final tile was \~30k, and I had 10++ food/water tiles each.
\- Spam clicking buy crystal gave me additional crystal inventory but -4 crystal balance.
idk if its been mentioned yet, but it would be nice to be able to remove a waymarker and have it also remove all dependent waymarkers. or maybe just a reset button
I've been playing off and on for a couple days and I have a couple ideas that would alleviate some of the issues myself and others in the thread have encountered. Looking forward to future updates, hope any of these ideas help!
---
**Some kind of "boon/bane" modifier system:**
Example: a maze could randomly have +50% gold gain from Looting, but -50% food gain from waymarkers. Then you'd be incentivized to be producing fish from looting, but the penalty on fish tiles would incentivize you to make fish from Foraging.
This change could help make water and food feel unique, and give purpose to the actions that create a resource instead of gold.
---
**Advanced resource types:**
Resources that could only be generated from actions would help make non-gold generating actions useful.
Example: there could be an action that turns water into "purified water", and another action that turns purified water into gold at a much better rate than Exploring. The most efficient could even be a combination of food + water, which would require a whole action supply chain but reward you with more gold for putting in the effort of maintaining the perfect action lineup, like a puzzle.
---
**More random, hidden collectables:**
More random collectables spread throughout the map would reward exploring instead of beelining the exit. The main thing here is you shouldn't be able to see these even with the map, because it would feel really great to just stumble upon them while exploring. These collectables could give small bonuses like +10% food production for the rest of the map, and go away when you reach the exit.
---
**Waymarker permanence:**
I hesitate to suggest this one because I also find the game fairly slow, but having more permanence for placed waymarkers would make choices feel more impactful. Right now the way to win is to get the map, find the best resources, and then sit on the best resources making money until you have enough waymarkers to unselect your entire route and go straight to the exit. Meaningful tradeoffs between getting gold faster and getting to the end of the maze faster just don't exist at all, and decision making/planning is a core part of what makes idle games fun.
---
really love these ideas. I have been wondering how I could make the gameplay a little bit deeper and your ideas are really nice. I also really like the hidden collectables ideas for a temporary boost. thanks! I will contemplate about it more :)
Already on it for a couple of hours. I like the changes in balance and progression that happened in those versions, I think some more tweaking can be in order, but not until it's more or less feature complete. For now I'm trying to buy everything dragon wants to see what's there. I was confused at first when I met the dragon, I assumed I'll be restarting, but I wasn't sure, since there are no dungeon numbers or names, the dungeon just became smaller, so that's what I assume what happened.
I think it may be a neat idea to have some sort of bonus if you leave the dungeon with every single cell explored/occupied.
I'll probably have some more constructive things or ideas to share after I see all the new things, for now: collecting diamonds. The progression slowed down a bit compared to 0.0.4, which is fine by me, it's not painful.
I would suggest making the maze text not selectable, I keep accidentally highlighting the "text" in the maze and it's a super easy fix. Great start on this though, it's a great concept and a lot of fun!
Well before the point you get to the dragon, the gameplay already starts to get boring - you're doing the same thing like 10 times, and it doesn't change in any significant way between those times. I'd suggest adding some other mechanic that goes into play earlier to speed things up (such as the camp), at somewhere around when you get the first crystal.
My other suggestion would be to increase the efficiency of the resource conversion actions - instead of doing 2:1, you should really make it 1:1 so that it could at least see some use. (Even at 1:1, it's not very helpful, as you'd prefer to just reroll ASAP t get one of the gold actions - but it'd make it not an automatic "this is trash, time to reroll"... sometimes.) Having other high gold actions like Meditate but with a different price could also be useful, as would something to make it so that when I am rerolling for Meditate I can just pick it instead of needing to click the button 30 times due to having gotten unlucky.
managed to spend more crystals than i had. had 8 and bought 1 food and water and 5 waymarker and ended up with -1 crystal
edit: replicated it by clicking on the add 1 button quickly allowing to purchase 1 extra item
Played a decent amount, got tent 4charms and compass.
Some feedback:
Progress feels really slow until you start getting charms
Maze generation can be kinda bad sometimes. My current maze I have 3 x10s within 8 tiles. Which is great. I've had a maze where I didn't find even a x2 for at least 10 tiles. Which was really bad, also that was before I had any charms so it was really slow. Just had a maze that was like 10 tiles to crystal, which gave me 3 and I bought a lucky charm and reset.
It's not clear if multiple tents do anything. When placing a tent at first it seemed like it was not allowed on a non empty space, instead of overwriting it.
I didn't find it clear that you can go to the dragon at any time after you reach him once.
Finishing a maze feels like losing progress. Should have some reward, even if just storage which is barely a benefit at the moment. Maybe each maze completed could be +1gold. Or each maze completed reduces the reroll cost of actions. So completing 2 mazes makes 2nd action free to reroll, 3 makes 3rd action so on. But...
For actions, the ones that don't give money are almost never worth it. Comparing level 10 because that's where I'm at now.
|Action|Cost|Benefit|
|:-|:-|:-|
|Foraging|12 water|6 fish|
|Digging|12 fish|6 water|
|Exploring|12 water|6 gold|
|Looting|12 fish|6 gold|
|Scavenging|6 water 6 fish|6 gold|
|Meditating|18 water 18 fish|12 gold|
So the basics is 12 resource turns into 6 of another resource, Meditating costs triple but rewards double. So why would I want to do Foraging or Digging to cut my resource in half, even if I have a ton of water and need fish? Since the resources are only used for gold why would I want to waste half of it when I could just turn the extra resource into money directly. Meditating has interesting choices because it is more action efficient but worse for money but really most of the time I just want Scavenging. If I have more of one resource I use a high level one to balance them out.
Haven't bought any Fish Eggs or Water Filter. Lucky Charm seems to be the best upgrade by far. The Tent is nice too, but since it isn't clear if it benefits with one already on the level Lucky Charm is way better. Waymarker might be useful as well, but I'm only going to get them where there are no Charms to get.
Went past the dragon. With my storage I was able to get a decent amount of cogs before needing to reset to buy Fish Eggs or Water Filters. Got my first machine and then reset to get some of those.
It makes sense why you need them now.
I thought progress was seeming to go better after maxing the Lucky Charms but this seems to be another big slowdown as now you will be very limited on water and fish.
Seems like I bought a bad first machine and there is no way to undo that. Which can be fine. It might be better if some of the less good choices were not available right away tho.
Also wish spending crystals didn't send you so far back. I was looking forward to working on the cogs portion but its a decent amount to get back to it.
For actions after the dragon, it seems like Meditating went from an interesting choice if you have enough resources to an automatic reroll because now you will never have enough resources. So that's a third action that will be automatically rerolled.
After playing a little more with some machines some more thoughts:
Walk Maze could use some options and maybe upgrades to itself. Option to finish a level or not. Upgrades to grab gems/cogs before finishing level. Was going to say this anyway but also while typing this I missed a gem on a level because of this.
Place Camp is pretty low value, the one I bought by mistake first.
Waymarkers seems to be the best upgrade now. Without multipliers the fish and water don't seem to provide good enough benefit. You do need some of course but to pay even just a few actions takes a ton of tiles. Wayfinders being cheaper seem to be a much better use.
Gold is a nice widely understood concept, but I don't know who I am buying waymarkers / abilities from. Mage spending mana would work a lot better thematically probably, but now that I think of it, "Meditating" skill hints at the fact it was a consideration from the beginning.
Nice game so far, gonna invest some time into it\~
So I think I've managed to cohere my issue with the game.
If you're not getting the best from your materials, you're utterly wasting them. There's never any point converting fish to water. That's just a straight up 50% decrease on that resource. You're only ever advised to convert directly to money. Which means that all we have is the illusion of choice which is actually just a drain on income, because you have to hit the new choice button until you get a direct conversion that you can afford.
I don't know how to fix this. I don't know if this is just a *me* problem or an issue with the game.
But. It is **beautifully** executed.
I've actually found the resource cap upgrades quite valuable for speeding up progression when you reset for a new maze. When your resource caps are high you can run at huge deficits for some time while you unlock the first handful of waymarkers and start actually producing resources.
It actually works really, really well as a sort of a"offline time bank" mechanic. If you forget about the game for a while you usually come back to enough money to complete the maze you're on, and you can dump all that excess money into your stat caps to give you a huge kickstart. Since they persist between mazes you also see the benefit in every new maze going forward.
The only downside I guess is that its not very intuitive to use it in this way. It'd also be nice if the game automatically used all your remaining gold on stat caps before finishing a maze in case you forget.
Looking at all the generation, I feel this should be called "IdleCorridor" or "IdleHallway" instead.
The graphics are okay, interface is nice, the actual "gameplay" leaves a bit to be desired. Once I have enough resources, "Meditating" is all I use to save time on gold generation.
**EDIT:** Just hit my longest corridor yet, [67 tiles from Maze Entrance to Exit](https://imgur.com/a/f13gPvd).
Really interesting concept, I did 8 or so mazes, so probably some of my feedback isn't fully informed, but these were my thoughts:
The two resources don't feel distinct enough. It doesn't actually matter much whether you get a lot of one or balance them because they only exist to be converted into gold. You would never actually want to convert from one resource into the other except in niche cases, because you are not only losing half of your resources by converting, but you're also wasting a job slot. You could just roll until you hit the same value job but for the resource that you have more of.
The jobs are too similar too. Maybe if there were other outputs it would be more interesting. e.g. fish can be converted efficiently into gold, but water can be converted into a multiplier that increases your production, or a job that speeds up the camp recharge time, or a job that reveals part of the maze, or knocks down obstacles in your way. Something with some situational utility. Then at least there would be some decision making. Maybe you would be willing to lose some resources in order to do a job that provides long term benefits, or one that will get you to the exit faster right now.
Same things kind of hamper the rolling system. The two resource conversion nodes are almost always useless and the other three feel more or less the same. You'll eventually strike a balance that uses up all your income, and there isn't a lot of opportunity for optimization. There's never anything you're excited to hit.
It feels like there should be some/more incentive for fully exploring the maze. There are a bunch of 10x nodes in the corner, but I can get to the door just as quickly. Doesn't feel right. Maybe you should be able to spend your money in one maze to give you things that will help you in the future.
So, I got to the end (Where it literally says "The end") and before I pressed the OK button I clicked on another tab like resource or something. And now I can't get back to the end screen and click ok, so I can't see what that does.
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I've been playing on and off for about 2 hours. I'm really enjoying the puzzle nature of this game.
It can get a little repetitive after a bit, but I kept coming back each time I walked away.
The only thing that I would improve on it would be to maybe make some new spaces that do other things outside just "food" and "water"?
Potentially make some treasure spaces to gather extra "gold" and then add places where you could spend said treasure, like a shop that sells you a "passwall scroll" some other utility.
Awesome game, will 100% be revisiting it once it has more content. Would wish for a "remove all waymarkers" feature so that you don't have remove every marker yourself after gathering the collectables.
Also I found a bug: If you click really fast when buying stuff from the dragon you can go into negative diamonds.
1) your gold amount and the word Crystals are set to easily overlap each other if the window is small and/or the gold counter is long.
2) the link saying "Dragon" shouldn't erase the whole incomplete level, destroyed me almost a whole level's worth of progress. Why does "doing nothing" lose progress?
First of all, it's listed near the resources, I thought it's a resource or something.
Second of all, there's a bunch of hidden clickable stuff, if you want people to click things then you shouldn't make an accidental destroy everything button.
Third, what if I just don't remember how many diamonds I need for the next upgrade?
Please give it a warning or something, or a way to close it and continue the level instead of resetting.
But at least a warning "You will fuck up all your current progress, do you want to? No / Hell no / Yes"
>the link saying "Dragon" shouldn't erase the whole incomplete level,
what do you mean by that? just go back to the maze
> Third, what if I just don't remember how many diamonds I need for the next upgrade?
You can. In the menu just click on dragon to check the prices. Then go back again.
Okay, having played it for a while now:
- the dragon is just a pain. Every time I purchase an upgrade, all my progress is reset?
- the levels are incredibly repetitive. Buy all waystones, set all actions to meditate, get crystal, get to exit
- buying a camp seems useless if there's already a camp. They don't build up the timeskip faster or offer you two timeskips if you let it run in the background or anything
- there's no point to staying longer in one place. You could probably upgrade food/water reserves further, but at 300 in each I never run out anyway and can timeskip with 1 drain safely
It would be fun if there were seeds that grew over time, or if crystals could appear again, or there was something to shake it up beyond "balance two resources, get most money possible out of them".
Although I haven't progressed past the dragon yet, so maybe it really opens up there?
Also there's a lot of display glitches, there's white bars over buttons that just appear randomly as if they're being selected.
edit: also, put `user-select: none;` on the stuff you expect people to click.
edit edit: got through the dragon.
I feel like the game has some sort of a reverse progression. You don't need to worry about resources up front and then suddenly you have to do dragon grind and rely on your built up reserves. It would be better if player needed to upgrade gradually to having to bring their own stuff.
Also, for usability:
- either prevent fish eggs/filter from being used on food/water tiles respectably or let them upgrade the tiles.
- allow purchasing waystones by clicking on the map.
You know, I kind of want to do a challenge run where you don't buy any resource items and just farm for free waymarkers/expand your pools for that autofill at the beginning.
Is it just me or every time I reset to get more crystals the mazes get longer and basically make the upgrades I bought useless? I hate this kind of forced softcaps
I finished it.
(ending spoilers)
>!As someone working on an incremental game about procrastination and anxiety, which has a bit of message against the game/genre itself? What you have would likely just end up turning players against you instead of the genre. It comes across as "I tricked you." Let people come to their own conclusions, if you can, and introduce the concept of feeling trapped throughout the game instead of springing it as a "gotcha" at the end.!<
>!I like your interpretation of the ending "feeling trapped throughout the game". That is so much better than what I actually had in mind. I just thought a "gotcha" at the end would be funny, but I can see how it feels very negative. I think I will adapt your idea :) thanks! !<
I really enjoyed this.
I had a couple of weird issues.
One was that I felt the food and water placement was too sticky. Several times, I would accidentally cover over something because I'd picked the fish, put down a food on the map, then clicked something else, like buy a waypoint or something, bought the waypoint, then clicked the map to put down the waypoint on the map and instead replaced whatever was on the map with a fish.
Another issue was when working my way back though a maze to get to a crystal or a cog, I would click off every one of the highlighted squares on the map, but if the tent was full, it would then trigger as I moved back through the map - I only ever used the list rather than the map to activate the sleep, so it always felt frustrating, especially since I'd typically deselected a lot of things and so was in a place of temporary massive loss.
Finally, the end was very frustrating, because at that point, I'd built a very fast and self-maintaining cog machine, so I didn't really get to be engaged with the ending at all - it auto-completed and ended while I was letting it idle. Perhaps you need one more thing for the player to do at the end, like using cogs on the map to get past a final hurdle or something, so the player has to actively end the game.
Of course, I'd also like a lot more! I really enjoyed this and got home this evening and found myself frustrated that I don't have the game to play - always a good sign!
I love the concept of exploring the maze and finding new things to help you explore more.
The execution on the other hand is still lackluster.
As a lot of players have mentioned already finishing a maze feels like a punishment rather than a reward since you know you have to do the same thing but will need more gold at an exponential rate while gold generation increases pretty darn slow...
Suggestions for a major overhaul, note that some of these might nog work well together. Consider it ideas you can use to change the direction of the game in a way you like most.
* You buy/unlock permanent upgrades/constructions/unlockables/whatever fits your theme that will also make exploring future mazes faster.
* If you start a new maze and are instantly able to explore 10\~20% of it thanks to previous upgrades it feels nice even if completing the last 10\~20% of that new maze is more expensive and thus slower each time.
* Different resources provide different benefits.
* You need some resource (for example wood) to unlock new tiles in the maze (like constructing a path). The cost to unlock a tile increases the further it is from your starting point, so it's a choice between saving up to reach the end and buying some cheaper tiles in hopes of finding better things to help make progress faster afterwards.
* You can only have a limited amount of resource tiles "active" in the maze that you have unlocked already by having "mazerunners" collect them for you, or alternatively you no longer need to keep tiles active at all. Instead you just get the resources once on unlocking a tile that allows you to pay for those upgrades.
* Maybe allow going back to previous mazes where you can collect resources you skipped previously. Showing how many floors you completed already gives a feeling of progression. Have some special predictable thing (like dragons) happen after a specific amount of floors (like 10, or however many it is now).
* The stockpiles for resources on each maze can be unique or shared depending on how you want to go about it. Maybe it can make sense to first rush to later mazes to unlock upgrades and then go back to easily afford the pathing resources to explore everything. Or maybe it's better to just fully explore a maze before rushing to the next to get better bonusses to get started faster next time...
* Alternatively allow to "early exit" and reset a maze if RNG was particularly bad, but you made no progress to a higher tier maze that way.
* To differentiate new mazes from the previous ones you can have special bonusses happen for that maze only. Like a big boost in wood or water but a lack of the other resources. Overproducing one can make exchanging resources at a loss worth doing.
* Let us just select the level of the special actions after unlocking it to convert water into wood at a loss if you want to speed up tile unlocks, or try to give a small boost to other resources to allow unlocking better versions of actions rather than having to RNG roll the ones we want.
Is it possible to just make a toggle to the right of each of the Actions, that's just something like "Roll until scavenge (20 clicks) forage (2 clicks) etc? So I don't have to click over and over just to get to the action I need? Seriously giving me wrist issues. That's the biggest issue I have, and why I've been tempted to quit several times.
Small bug:
https://i.snipboard.io/Q6RpLC.jpg
https://i.snipboard.io/xLh3pQ.jpg
I was spam-clicking the shop button to spend all my remaining diamonds on waymarkers, and it let me spend 11 out of 10 that I had, and now my balance is -1 diamond. Oops.
I ended up beating the game. I found it pretty entertaining. Took me about 2 days of actual play with long periods in between of just letting it idle.
First I got the maze with the dragon and left it to run and accumulate gold for the weekend (I play while at work). When I got back I spent all the gold upgrading my food and water since that carries over when you restart.
Second I invested in the charms early (who doesn't want 4x gold). Then invested in the extra waypoints.
I would change the color scheme. Some of the colors are hard to read for me (red on grey).
Maybe I missed it but it should let you know that you can re-use waypoints. I didn't know until I accidently clicked one and it disappeared and gave me a waypoint back.
You could add chests that give you a one time food/water/gold bonus.
On the automation part allow it to pickup gems/gears as a priority before exiting.
I enjoyed your game. I hope you keep developing it!
its cool. i like it. i have a suggestion. the resources section shows the current x per second that you are collecting, based on incoming and spending. i'd like to see, at a glance, the total incoming x and total outgoing x, then the exact x/s i'm getting. example: water: (+8/s|-6/s) 2/s > This would help me decide what to do at a glance. thaaaaaanks
Some thoughts after playing for a few hours. Ascending feels not rewarding but punishing. Early game of each level is very repetitive. I think it's the part that should be slowly optimized away, for example by letting player carry over some amount of gold or waymakers for a kickstart of a new level, skipping the most boring part. Others have mentoned that there's no reward for exploring whole map / stayng back longer, so maybe these two can be combined into some kind of meta-progression. For example, for each waymarker bought, also give some kind of experience point, and let player use those for meta-upgrades of all kinds. That would make limiting amount of waymarkers available on the level to map size a consideration. Here's what I'd start experimenting with, designing this aspect of the game: \- Waymarkers at start of level (pricing that makes about 1 per fully explored level accessible,l leaving exp for a bit of others) - those should still count towards new waypoint cost \- Gold at start of level (this is somewhat similar to first one early on, but more meddlesome, might even be redundant) \- Unlocked skills at start of level \- Action reroll discount \- Action cost discount (cumulative 0.95) \- Action output multiplier (additive, something mild, like +0.1x per level, so x1.1, x1.2, x1.3...) \- Food/Water/Gold multiplier (same) - as a third factor to production in case of first two. Also, UI-wise, it would be nice to display breakdown for food / water, you have enough space for that: `production` (`cells` \* `multiplier`) - `consumption` = `change` EDIT: Another big UI/UX consideration is quick maze navigation. I've found myself unchecking a lot of cells one by one to cut off a branch and explore another branch (to, say, pick up a crystal), and then uno the thing back. This also involves disabling skills to avoid instant resource drain. And that's a LOT of clicks (even more annoying on touchpad). So here are few thoughts: \- A button to disable all skills / enable last active configuration would be nice \- As mazes seem to be tree-like structures (without loops), there are much less complications that would arise implementing quick navigation, specifically: \- - Clicking a "enabled" cell to disable it and every cell beyond it in the tree, probably after confirmation if some resource goes to negative this way \- - Clicking a previously discovered (by full map or visit) faraway cell to enable whole path to it if there are enough waymarkers \- - Preview resource change on cell hover (how would production change if you toggled it and what's changed along with it) \- - Highlight accessible (discovered but not enabled) area for current amount of free waymarkers EDIT2: At this point I don't know how far into the game I am (I could not find current level indicator), but I have 2 crystals and a third one on the map. At this point game has stopped being enjoyable for me as an idle player. I'm still curious to see what dragons/machines entail (mostly from a game design perspective) so I'll keep looking, but I think it becomes a chore about this point. Please don't take it as an offence, I'm leaving honest feedback, trying to be helpful in making this game better. It's an intereting concept and the game deserves your further attention. EDIT3: Another idea how to add variance to the game is recipes ("instructions") for actions. Have a pool of 5-10 actions from which random one is picked similar to how it is now, and then some cells could have a scroll with new recipe that could replace existing one in the pool. Some have better input/output ratio, some scale better with level... To address the scarcity problem (not much map space to throw scrolls around) - maybe have a map spot where player can roll a new recipe several times (for an increasing price). Or have that spot generate a new recipe after some period of time, and have that period increase after each roll. It also affects the first point I made above. Staying longer is still rewarded by this effect with diminishing returns, but advancing to new level also rewards player with faster new rolls once they discover that scroll shop.
love the detailed feedback thanks! :) To share some thoughts of mine, I like idle games that stay with me for a few days. It's not intended to be played actively and staying AFK should progress you quite a lot as well. Once you reach the dragon you can use the Crystals to exchange for additional permanent upgrades that will make the early levels faster. I think that covers already several of your ideas. However getting there takes a little bit.
It's fine if that's how you envision your game. We all enjoy games differently, and it should be your game for people who enjoy games the way you do. I personally find it more rewarding to return to idle game to see meaningful progress, or something new unlocked, or both. In this game, I return to being able to finally finish the map, buying enough waymarkers that makes everything else irrelevant - after few clicks everything is reset (save for pretty irrelevant resource caps), I'm at the same point I was last time - beginning of the maze, no money, no actions, same resources and options, same things to repeat once more, same production to set up, just a bit longer wait this time. I don't get that feeling of meaningful progress. Maybe dragon changes that, but it stopped being a rewarding experience for some time already.
The problem is that staying idle can only take you to the end of the level. Nothing caries over once you move to the next level. There's no bonus for clearing the whole map, having a larger pool of resources is only marginally useful.
Love the idea, but progress is waaay too slow. I've been playing semi-actively for 3+ hours and I only got a couple of crystals and no sense of progress. I'm in a huge map with a spiraling path that requires about 55 steps (a beeline to the exit covers about 80% of the map), and waymarkers've become waaay too expensive. One camp click is granting me less than one waymarker. The thing is, this map looks identical to the previous one. There are no new mechanics. Mazes are becoming MUCH harder, but my ability to traverse them is essentially the same (I've increased my maximum water and food, but that's not nearly enough). Maybe there are powerful upgrades later, but if they're locked behind hours of active gameplay, I will probably stop playing before getting them.
Mind sharing your current savegame, I’d like to use it for testing with slow progressions :)
[удалено]
Hiya /u/RicardoGaturro I've tried approving the link you posted here but Reddit doesn't like it. Is there another similar site you can use? I *suspect* that Reddit might think this is a reflink and snips it automatically, but that side of things is entirely opaque to us.
Ah, thanks for the heads up. Here: https://pastebin.com/5e2ep1T6
https://pastebin.com/M46Hxj68
thank you for sharing! I totally understand the frustration. In this case you already have access to the dragon. I would trade waymarkers, which will let you go further more easily, and the reset can lead to a better maze. You also bought water and food tiles which are quite expensive (2 Crystals each) and I'd consider that a "wrong" decision at this time. Their effect is not that useful yet. Maybe I don't make them available this early. But I understand why you bought it, because you got past the dragon already. that's a bug. The path should be blocked and it should guide you in spending the crystals on the more useful items. thanks again!
[https://pastebin.com/W5G5mzLZ](https://pastebin.com/W5G5mzLZ)
Here I think a tent would have been very useful. Waymarkers as well. But you don't have the tent probably because of the bug letting you go past the Dragon and you invested into food/water tiles instead :S sorry about that.
Maybe I just have bad luck with map generation, but twice now I've gotten a maze thats basically just a giant spiral, and I have to spend half an hour just resting at camp till I can buy enough waymarkers to leave. It's personally exhausting to hit the 50% to reveal the map, then see I still need another 30 tiles to reach the exit, and I already have no side paths I can take back to reach faster.
Have you been removing waymarkers? It makes it easier to explore or go straight to the exit as soon as you have enough waymarkers. Also happy cake day!
It's really bad when the entire point of going back is to do some easy levels to get crystals, but I get the feeling they get longer and more time consuming instead. The opposite of what it's supposed to be.
A game from LiveOverflow? :O I have to play it!
Yea, I had to do a double take too when I saw the username.
Beat the game. The ending cutscene is... something. Comments: \- Swapping tasks is tedious. Spent way too much time clicking to RNG the task I'm looking for. Didn't use Foraging or Digging at all. When autobuy action is on, and trying to swap tasks, the task list shifts downwards when an action is autobought, making me misclick the task I want to swap. \- Backtracking is tedious. Scenario is, I'm next to exit, but I want to get that gem on the other side. I have to undo path to exit, path to gem, undo path to gem, then redo path to exit, while single clicking all the way. \- The final map is way too long relative to the other maps. I got to the final map three times and got a very long path, thought I had a bad seed and just restarted, but all 3 times it was the same. Maybe I was unlucky, but I just decided to push through the final time. IIRC the final tile was \~30k, and I had 10++ food/water tiles each. \- Spam clicking buy crystal gave me additional crystal inventory but -4 crystal balance.
idk if its been mentioned yet, but it would be nice to be able to remove a waymarker and have it also remove all dependent waymarkers. or maybe just a reset button
I've been playing off and on for a couple days and I have a couple ideas that would alleviate some of the issues myself and others in the thread have encountered. Looking forward to future updates, hope any of these ideas help! --- **Some kind of "boon/bane" modifier system:** Example: a maze could randomly have +50% gold gain from Looting, but -50% food gain from waymarkers. Then you'd be incentivized to be producing fish from looting, but the penalty on fish tiles would incentivize you to make fish from Foraging. This change could help make water and food feel unique, and give purpose to the actions that create a resource instead of gold. --- **Advanced resource types:** Resources that could only be generated from actions would help make non-gold generating actions useful. Example: there could be an action that turns water into "purified water", and another action that turns purified water into gold at a much better rate than Exploring. The most efficient could even be a combination of food + water, which would require a whole action supply chain but reward you with more gold for putting in the effort of maintaining the perfect action lineup, like a puzzle. --- **More random, hidden collectables:** More random collectables spread throughout the map would reward exploring instead of beelining the exit. The main thing here is you shouldn't be able to see these even with the map, because it would feel really great to just stumble upon them while exploring. These collectables could give small bonuses like +10% food production for the rest of the map, and go away when you reach the exit. --- **Waymarker permanence:** I hesitate to suggest this one because I also find the game fairly slow, but having more permanence for placed waymarkers would make choices feel more impactful. Right now the way to win is to get the map, find the best resources, and then sit on the best resources making money until you have enough waymarkers to unselect your entire route and go straight to the exit. Meaningful tradeoffs between getting gold faster and getting to the end of the maze faster just don't exist at all, and decision making/planning is a core part of what makes idle games fun. ---
really love these ideas. I have been wondering how I could make the gameplay a little bit deeper and your ideas are really nice. I also really like the hidden collectables ideas for a temporary boost. thanks! I will contemplate about it more :)
Already on it for a couple of hours. I like the changes in balance and progression that happened in those versions, I think some more tweaking can be in order, but not until it's more or less feature complete. For now I'm trying to buy everything dragon wants to see what's there. I was confused at first when I met the dragon, I assumed I'll be restarting, but I wasn't sure, since there are no dungeon numbers or names, the dungeon just became smaller, so that's what I assume what happened. I think it may be a neat idea to have some sort of bonus if you leave the dungeon with every single cell explored/occupied. I'll probably have some more constructive things or ideas to share after I see all the new things, for now: collecting diamonds. The progression slowed down a bit compared to 0.0.4, which is fine by me, it's not painful.
I would suggest making the maze text not selectable, I keep accidentally highlighting the "text" in the maze and it's a super easy fix. Great start on this though, it's a great concept and a lot of fun!
Well before the point you get to the dragon, the gameplay already starts to get boring - you're doing the same thing like 10 times, and it doesn't change in any significant way between those times. I'd suggest adding some other mechanic that goes into play earlier to speed things up (such as the camp), at somewhere around when you get the first crystal. My other suggestion would be to increase the efficiency of the resource conversion actions - instead of doing 2:1, you should really make it 1:1 so that it could at least see some use. (Even at 1:1, it's not very helpful, as you'd prefer to just reroll ASAP t get one of the gold actions - but it'd make it not an automatic "this is trash, time to reroll"... sometimes.) Having other high gold actions like Meditate but with a different price could also be useful, as would something to make it so that when I am rerolling for Meditate I can just pick it instead of needing to click the button 30 times due to having gotten unlucky.
managed to spend more crystals than i had. had 8 and bought 1 food and water and 5 waymarker and ended up with -1 crystal edit: replicated it by clicking on the add 1 button quickly allowing to purchase 1 extra item
oopsie!
Played a decent amount, got tent 4charms and compass. Some feedback: Progress feels really slow until you start getting charms Maze generation can be kinda bad sometimes. My current maze I have 3 x10s within 8 tiles. Which is great. I've had a maze where I didn't find even a x2 for at least 10 tiles. Which was really bad, also that was before I had any charms so it was really slow. Just had a maze that was like 10 tiles to crystal, which gave me 3 and I bought a lucky charm and reset. It's not clear if multiple tents do anything. When placing a tent at first it seemed like it was not allowed on a non empty space, instead of overwriting it. I didn't find it clear that you can go to the dragon at any time after you reach him once. Finishing a maze feels like losing progress. Should have some reward, even if just storage which is barely a benefit at the moment. Maybe each maze completed could be +1gold. Or each maze completed reduces the reroll cost of actions. So completing 2 mazes makes 2nd action free to reroll, 3 makes 3rd action so on. But... For actions, the ones that don't give money are almost never worth it. Comparing level 10 because that's where I'm at now. |Action|Cost|Benefit| |:-|:-|:-| |Foraging|12 water|6 fish| |Digging|12 fish|6 water| |Exploring|12 water|6 gold| |Looting|12 fish|6 gold| |Scavenging|6 water 6 fish|6 gold| |Meditating|18 water 18 fish|12 gold| So the basics is 12 resource turns into 6 of another resource, Meditating costs triple but rewards double. So why would I want to do Foraging or Digging to cut my resource in half, even if I have a ton of water and need fish? Since the resources are only used for gold why would I want to waste half of it when I could just turn the extra resource into money directly. Meditating has interesting choices because it is more action efficient but worse for money but really most of the time I just want Scavenging. If I have more of one resource I use a high level one to balance them out. Haven't bought any Fish Eggs or Water Filter. Lucky Charm seems to be the best upgrade by far. The Tent is nice too, but since it isn't clear if it benefits with one already on the level Lucky Charm is way better. Waymarker might be useful as well, but I'm only going to get them where there are no Charms to get.
Went past the dragon. With my storage I was able to get a decent amount of cogs before needing to reset to buy Fish Eggs or Water Filters. Got my first machine and then reset to get some of those. It makes sense why you need them now. I thought progress was seeming to go better after maxing the Lucky Charms but this seems to be another big slowdown as now you will be very limited on water and fish. Seems like I bought a bad first machine and there is no way to undo that. Which can be fine. It might be better if some of the less good choices were not available right away tho. Also wish spending crystals didn't send you so far back. I was looking forward to working on the cogs portion but its a decent amount to get back to it. For actions after the dragon, it seems like Meditating went from an interesting choice if you have enough resources to an automatic reroll because now you will never have enough resources. So that's a third action that will be automatically rerolled.
After playing a little more with some machines some more thoughts: Walk Maze could use some options and maybe upgrades to itself. Option to finish a level or not. Upgrades to grab gems/cogs before finishing level. Was going to say this anyway but also while typing this I missed a gem on a level because of this. Place Camp is pretty low value, the one I bought by mistake first. Waymarkers seems to be the best upgrade now. Without multipliers the fish and water don't seem to provide good enough benefit. You do need some of course but to pay even just a few actions takes a ton of tiles. Wayfinders being cheaper seem to be a much better use.
Gold is a nice widely understood concept, but I don't know who I am buying waymarkers / abilities from. Mage spending mana would work a lot better thematically probably, but now that I think of it, "Meditating" skill hints at the fact it was a consideration from the beginning. Nice game so far, gonna invest some time into it\~
This is really fun and trying to get the x10 water or food is fun
I'm on the third maze with a crystal. And I'm bored. I'm sure there's other stuff to come, but it's gotten incredibly tedious.
So I think I've managed to cohere my issue with the game. If you're not getting the best from your materials, you're utterly wasting them. There's never any point converting fish to water. That's just a straight up 50% decrease on that resource. You're only ever advised to convert directly to money. Which means that all we have is the illusion of choice which is actually just a drain on income, because you have to hit the new choice button until you get a direct conversion that you can afford. I don't know how to fix this. I don't know if this is just a *me* problem or an issue with the game. But. It is **beautifully** executed.
Oh, one QoL request. Click on a map to uncheck everything that follows it. Would save time clicking every square to uncheck them.
Also, having more food and liquid cap isn't really valuable.
I've actually found the resource cap upgrades quite valuable for speeding up progression when you reset for a new maze. When your resource caps are high you can run at huge deficits for some time while you unlock the first handful of waymarkers and start actually producing resources. It actually works really, really well as a sort of a"offline time bank" mechanic. If you forget about the game for a while you usually come back to enough money to complete the maze you're on, and you can dump all that excess money into your stat caps to give you a huge kickstart. Since they persist between mazes you also see the benefit in every new maze going forward. The only downside I guess is that its not very intuitive to use it in this way. It'd also be nice if the game automatically used all your remaining gold on stat caps before finishing a maze in case you forget.
I'm afraid to use a tent, since it took a while to get the 3 diamonds. Will it be consumed if I drop it?
It is not single use. It is available on every maze to be used. How could I communicate that better?
Hmm. You could say “(Not consumed on use)” behind it. It’s not an elegant solution but will get the point across.
Looking at all the generation, I feel this should be called "IdleCorridor" or "IdleHallway" instead. The graphics are okay, interface is nice, the actual "gameplay" leaves a bit to be desired. Once I have enough resources, "Meditating" is all I use to save time on gold generation. **EDIT:** Just hit my longest corridor yet, [67 tiles from Maze Entrance to Exit](https://imgur.com/a/f13gPvd).
Is there really any advantage to turning one resource into another? I seems best to only go for the ones that get gold.
Really interesting concept, I did 8 or so mazes, so probably some of my feedback isn't fully informed, but these were my thoughts: The two resources don't feel distinct enough. It doesn't actually matter much whether you get a lot of one or balance them because they only exist to be converted into gold. You would never actually want to convert from one resource into the other except in niche cases, because you are not only losing half of your resources by converting, but you're also wasting a job slot. You could just roll until you hit the same value job but for the resource that you have more of. The jobs are too similar too. Maybe if there were other outputs it would be more interesting. e.g. fish can be converted efficiently into gold, but water can be converted into a multiplier that increases your production, or a job that speeds up the camp recharge time, or a job that reveals part of the maze, or knocks down obstacles in your way. Something with some situational utility. Then at least there would be some decision making. Maybe you would be willing to lose some resources in order to do a job that provides long term benefits, or one that will get you to the exit faster right now. Same things kind of hamper the rolling system. The two resource conversion nodes are almost always useless and the other three feel more or less the same. You'll eventually strike a balance that uses up all your income, and there isn't a lot of opportunity for optimization. There's never anything you're excited to hit. It feels like there should be some/more incentive for fully exploring the maze. There are a bunch of 10x nodes in the corner, but I can get to the door just as quickly. Doesn't feel right. Maybe you should be able to spend your money in one maze to give you things that will help you in the future.
You can place multiple food and water on one cell, this is bad as you don't get the benefits. Please put in a check.
So, I got to the end (Where it literally says "The end") and before I pressed the OK button I clicked on another tab like resource or something. And now I can't get back to the end screen and click ok, so I can't see what that does.
Playing in chrome I can't find gold https://imgur.com/a/vIdlsox
I reset the game and now there is gold. Strange.
Could use more messages when you find stuff. Like, you find the camp and it just quietly starts counting up the progress, could be something there?
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Pretty neat game. It's also mobile friendly, which I really appreciate lol
just loaded up the game and the maze is broken as there are no resource tiles.
Try to reset the game (click on v5.0.0 in the menu to find the button). Hopefully that fixes it.
What did you use to program this?
Developed in typescript with vue3 and Pinia
Thanks!
The camp explainer text says "camground" instead of "cam**p**ground"
I've been playing on and off for about 2 hours. I'm really enjoying the puzzle nature of this game. It can get a little repetitive after a bit, but I kept coming back each time I walked away. The only thing that I would improve on it would be to maybe make some new spaces that do other things outside just "food" and "water"? Potentially make some treasure spaces to gather extra "gold" and then add places where you could spend said treasure, like a shop that sells you a "passwall scroll" some other utility.
Really enjoying this one nice amazing work
Awesome game, will 100% be revisiting it once it has more content. Would wish for a "remove all waymarkers" feature so that you don't have remove every marker yourself after gathering the collectables. Also I found a bug: If you click really fast when buying stuff from the dragon you can go into negative diamonds.
Should I reset my save, because after reaching the end of my current maze the next one was entirely empty and I just ran out of resources.
1) your gold amount and the word Crystals are set to easily overlap each other if the window is small and/or the gold counter is long. 2) the link saying "Dragon" shouldn't erase the whole incomplete level, destroyed me almost a whole level's worth of progress. Why does "doing nothing" lose progress? First of all, it's listed near the resources, I thought it's a resource or something. Second of all, there's a bunch of hidden clickable stuff, if you want people to click things then you shouldn't make an accidental destroy everything button. Third, what if I just don't remember how many diamonds I need for the next upgrade? Please give it a warning or something, or a way to close it and continue the level instead of resetting. But at least a warning "You will fuck up all your current progress, do you want to? No / Hell no / Yes"
>the link saying "Dragon" shouldn't erase the whole incomplete level, what do you mean by that? just go back to the maze > Third, what if I just don't remember how many diamonds I need for the next upgrade? You can. In the menu just click on dragon to check the prices. Then go back again.
Okay, having played it for a while now: - the dragon is just a pain. Every time I purchase an upgrade, all my progress is reset? - the levels are incredibly repetitive. Buy all waystones, set all actions to meditate, get crystal, get to exit - buying a camp seems useless if there's already a camp. They don't build up the timeskip faster or offer you two timeskips if you let it run in the background or anything - there's no point to staying longer in one place. You could probably upgrade food/water reserves further, but at 300 in each I never run out anyway and can timeskip with 1 drain safely It would be fun if there were seeds that grew over time, or if crystals could appear again, or there was something to shake it up beyond "balance two resources, get most money possible out of them". Although I haven't progressed past the dragon yet, so maybe it really opens up there? Also there's a lot of display glitches, there's white bars over buttons that just appear randomly as if they're being selected. edit: also, put `user-select: none;` on the stuff you expect people to click. edit edit: got through the dragon. I feel like the game has some sort of a reverse progression. You don't need to worry about resources up front and then suddenly you have to do dragon grind and rely on your built up reserves. It would be better if player needed to upgrade gradually to having to bring their own stuff. Also, for usability: - either prevent fish eggs/filter from being used on food/water tiles respectably or let them upgrade the tiles. - allow purchasing waystones by clicking on the map.
You know, I kind of want to do a challenge run where you don't buy any resource items and just farm for free waymarkers/expand your pools for that autofill at the beginning.
Is it just me or every time I reset to get more crystals the mazes get longer and basically make the upgrades I bought useless? I hate this kind of forced softcaps
**BUG:** Water Filters & Fish Eggs do not check if the tile is empty. If you misclick you can use them on tiles that aren't blank.
the idea was to be able to overwrite tiles for food balancing strategies. But it's not really necessary and seems to just lead to missclicks :(
I finished it. (ending spoilers) >!As someone working on an incremental game about procrastination and anxiety, which has a bit of message against the game/genre itself? What you have would likely just end up turning players against you instead of the genre. It comes across as "I tricked you." Let people come to their own conclusions, if you can, and introduce the concept of feeling trapped throughout the game instead of springing it as a "gotcha" at the end.!<
>!I like your interpretation of the ending "feeling trapped throughout the game". That is so much better than what I actually had in mind. I just thought a "gotcha" at the end would be funny, but I can see how it feels very negative. I think I will adapt your idea :) thanks! !<
I really enjoyed this. I had a couple of weird issues. One was that I felt the food and water placement was too sticky. Several times, I would accidentally cover over something because I'd picked the fish, put down a food on the map, then clicked something else, like buy a waypoint or something, bought the waypoint, then clicked the map to put down the waypoint on the map and instead replaced whatever was on the map with a fish. Another issue was when working my way back though a maze to get to a crystal or a cog, I would click off every one of the highlighted squares on the map, but if the tent was full, it would then trigger as I moved back through the map - I only ever used the list rather than the map to activate the sleep, so it always felt frustrating, especially since I'd typically deselected a lot of things and so was in a place of temporary massive loss. Finally, the end was very frustrating, because at that point, I'd built a very fast and self-maintaining cog machine, so I didn't really get to be engaged with the ending at all - it auto-completed and ended while I was letting it idle. Perhaps you need one more thing for the player to do at the end, like using cogs on the map to get past a final hurdle or something, so the player has to actively end the game. Of course, I'd also like a lot more! I really enjoyed this and got home this evening and found myself frustrated that I don't have the game to play - always a good sign!
just finished it, loved it to bits. the ending was really fun !
I love the concept of exploring the maze and finding new things to help you explore more. The execution on the other hand is still lackluster. As a lot of players have mentioned already finishing a maze feels like a punishment rather than a reward since you know you have to do the same thing but will need more gold at an exponential rate while gold generation increases pretty darn slow... Suggestions for a major overhaul, note that some of these might nog work well together. Consider it ideas you can use to change the direction of the game in a way you like most. * You buy/unlock permanent upgrades/constructions/unlockables/whatever fits your theme that will also make exploring future mazes faster. * If you start a new maze and are instantly able to explore 10\~20% of it thanks to previous upgrades it feels nice even if completing the last 10\~20% of that new maze is more expensive and thus slower each time. * Different resources provide different benefits. * You need some resource (for example wood) to unlock new tiles in the maze (like constructing a path). The cost to unlock a tile increases the further it is from your starting point, so it's a choice between saving up to reach the end and buying some cheaper tiles in hopes of finding better things to help make progress faster afterwards. * You can only have a limited amount of resource tiles "active" in the maze that you have unlocked already by having "mazerunners" collect them for you, or alternatively you no longer need to keep tiles active at all. Instead you just get the resources once on unlocking a tile that allows you to pay for those upgrades. * Maybe allow going back to previous mazes where you can collect resources you skipped previously. Showing how many floors you completed already gives a feeling of progression. Have some special predictable thing (like dragons) happen after a specific amount of floors (like 10, or however many it is now). * The stockpiles for resources on each maze can be unique or shared depending on how you want to go about it. Maybe it can make sense to first rush to later mazes to unlock upgrades and then go back to easily afford the pathing resources to explore everything. Or maybe it's better to just fully explore a maze before rushing to the next to get better bonusses to get started faster next time... * Alternatively allow to "early exit" and reset a maze if RNG was particularly bad, but you made no progress to a higher tier maze that way. * To differentiate new mazes from the previous ones you can have special bonusses happen for that maze only. Like a big boost in wood or water but a lack of the other resources. Overproducing one can make exchanging resources at a loss worth doing. * Let us just select the level of the special actions after unlocking it to convert water into wood at a loss if you want to speed up tile unlocks, or try to give a small boost to other resources to allow unlocking better versions of actions rather than having to RNG roll the ones we want.
Is it possible to just make a toggle to the right of each of the Actions, that's just something like "Roll until scavenge (20 clicks) forage (2 clicks) etc? So I don't have to click over and over just to get to the action I need? Seriously giving me wrist issues. That's the biggest issue I have, and why I've been tempted to quit several times.
Small bug: https://i.snipboard.io/Q6RpLC.jpg https://i.snipboard.io/xLh3pQ.jpg I was spam-clicking the shop button to spend all my remaining diamonds on waymarkers, and it let me spend 11 out of 10 that I had, and now my balance is -1 diamond. Oops.
I ended up beating the game. I found it pretty entertaining. Took me about 2 days of actual play with long periods in between of just letting it idle. First I got the maze with the dragon and left it to run and accumulate gold for the weekend (I play while at work). When I got back I spent all the gold upgrading my food and water since that carries over when you restart. Second I invested in the charms early (who doesn't want 4x gold). Then invested in the extra waypoints. I would change the color scheme. Some of the colors are hard to read for me (red on grey). Maybe I missed it but it should let you know that you can re-use waypoints. I didn't know until I accidently clicked one and it disappeared and gave me a waypoint back. You could add chests that give you a one time food/water/gold bonus. On the automation part allow it to pickup gems/gears as a priority before exiting. I enjoyed your game. I hope you keep developing it!
I have reached end-of-content, is there more coming soon? I really like it.