hey pharland.
it definitely took me a second to figure out. When all of the buttons were green upon opening the emails, I just assumed to click all of them. It wasn't until I was fired that I took a bit more time and realized what was going on. No big deal and a probably a little bit on my end on not reading carefully enough, though it probably could have been a bit more clear.
I feel like this could be a smaller part of a larger management type game where this is maybe one of many tasks you can/have to complete.
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Idle Support's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Game Design | #4 | 3.250 | 3.250 |
| Narrative/Mood | #4 | 3.750 | 3.750 |
| Overall | #5 | 2.750 | 2.750 |
| Polish | #5 | 2.500 | 2.500 |
| Audio | #5 | 1.750 | 1.750 |
| Art | #5 | 2.750 | 2.750 |
| Overall | #5 | 2.792 | 2.792 |
Ranked from 4 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Yes - Icelamp
Comments
Appreciate the feedback!!
Yeah I think I'll take Zackavelli's advice and change the start colours to green, and try to highlight the part of the tutorial that says "buttons change colour".
And yes!! Part of my dream if this game had more time spent on it would be that you're eventually automating so much that you basically don't do anything and just get paid, then you can start making things optionally harder for yourself, or take on multiple jobs, or start building relationships with coworkers, or start hacking. Aim was to build the MVP in the 7 days I had haha
cool idea and well executed! everything fit well together. i wish the game would keep playing when it loses mouse focus so i could work on my own things while waiting for emails to pop in. and i wish there were more patterns to the emails to give that part more depth cause it's super cool and fun but lost replayability quickly.
Haha, great idea!
What I liked the most:
- vibe of the game
- game loop (grind - upgrade - grind - reset - upgrade more and grind better. 10/10 idle game design)
- with a couple of upgrades you start getting this neat idle tick
- while art was super minimal, it was selling the heavy vibe of it support well
Some obvious parts that I miss (probably due to time constraints):
- Music and SFX
- Content variety (I was running across like 3 emails or so with the same order of answers - I think this is a good example where LLM could help with generation of content in a short time frame.
- player's feedback (e.g. I was never informed if I sent the email with all right answers, was it fast enough, was manager getting happier or not, how much did I earn this day etc. Some flowing numbers and/or particles would go a long way here)
Other ideas
- I would love to see some curve-balls from time to time (e.g. similar e-mail but a bit different answers so I am not running on an auto pilot all the time).
- Once you change the job it would be awesome to have a different set of issues coming into my email. The I would have to 'learn' the right answers from the beginning when switching jobs, making it a trade-off scenario (I get a nice cash out but I will need to focus more for a first few days at the new job)
- I would like to see more emails per day, so I feel pressured as an IT help desk consultant.
- I would love to see more idle upgrades. Crypto farm clearly outperforms my day job. If I had to answer way more emails per day I could see some idle upgrades that would automate my tasks somehow.
You hit the nail on the head!
Fun fact, I joined this game jam 3 weeks late so I only had 1 week to do this, hence the lack of sound, UI styling, feedback and content for emails and upgrades. There's still a lot I want to add so I may continue working on this in the future! I did have plans for upgrades to increase email spawn rates, rare emails that are harder but reward more, auto-solving emails (not always 100% correct), etc.
Thanks for the detailed feedback, and for playing!!






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