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Ai Usage
If you have competed before, how has your game changed?
Yes. HALFLIGHT ran in a jam earlier this month and every bug players reported there is fixed in v1.0.2.
1. Fullscreen did nothing useful. The canvas was pinned at 960 by 600 with only a max size, so itch grew the frame and left the game marooned in the corner at about 16 percent of a 1440p screen. It is an aspect fit now and fills the window at any size.
2. The help overlay painted over the buttons but the buttons stayed clickable through it, so opening the help could eject a cell or spend credits without ever showing you.
3. One player softlocked twice and had to restart. That broke our own rule that a bad run should never cost you the whole game, so a stalled vault now gets an announced regulator stake instead of a dead end.
The opening was also dead time, so starting credits went from 120 to 210. No other rate or cost was touched.
Disclosure, matching the declaration above: the code is AI written and the art is generated by the game itself from a hand authored palette. The audio is procedural synthesis, not a generative model.
Genre
Any Horror
Dating | Farm | Colony | City Building
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Hello and welcome to Feedback Quest 9! My name is Hythrain, and I'm one of the hosts for this lovely event! I'm also one of the streamers, so both the game and this feedback are being done live! If you want to see the see the VOD, let me know and I'll link you to it when it's uploaded to YouTube!
So I'll admit I don't know if this game is featuring real isotopes. I know that thoron, a name you use for several isotopes, is actually just a commonly used name to refer to a specific isotope known as Radon-220, but beyond this I can't say. If this game is named on real isotopes, that's cool.
There are two primary complaints I have about the game, both stemming from the early game. The first is that players are forced to read a bunch of text instead of being taught the game in a more organic way. The more text a player has to read before they start playing, the less they're going to remember. Working this into the gameplay in a guided tutorial would be better, especially one that explains things like what the various numbers related to each isotope even mean and how to utilize shielding, cooling and ejecting.
Second, I felt like the game can start very slow due to the long half-life of the starting isotope. I think it'd be useful to have a function that lets the player alter the game's speed, both to speed it up and to slow it down, so that they can control things better.
Some other issues I had were that I found myself just not using the elements meant to absorb heat from other cells. it just felt so inefficient to me compared to just having stronger cooling systems in each cell. I also was really annoyed at the fact that I had to keep scrolling all the way down the elements list to what I wanted instead of the game remembering the last element I had put in and keeping the menu there when I went to put something new in. The last thing to annoy me was how isotopes start to cause a money loss once they have so little mass. Considering the idea is that elements will decay into other elements, having this function of the player losing money makes no sense because it discourages them from letting the isotope decay fully. And speaking of losing money, why do I lose money if I have no isotopes in my cells? That made no sense. I thought it might've been a bug, but even after I filled a cell and ejected it I was still losing money.
Overall it's a great concept, but I feel it needs some improvements to make it more fun to play.
Thank you, and yes please to the VOD link when it is up. Watching someone hit the wall in real time is worth more than a write up, and this write up is already unusually specific.
On thoron you are right and we were loose with it. Thoron is Radon 220 specifically rather than a family, so using it as a label across several isotopes is wrong. The decay chains themselves are real.
The two economy points are the ones worth flagging hardest. Losing money with nothing in the cells is not intended. Neither is a penalty that punishes you for letting an isotope decay all the way down, because decay is the thing the game is supposed to be about, so that one is a design error rather than a tuning problem.
The element list not remembering your last pick is an obvious miss, and so is the lack of a speed control, which the long opening half life makes close to mandatory.
The text wall is fair and it is the hardest of these to fix properly, so no promise on a date for that one.
What I could recommend for the text wall is a guided tutorial. I mentioned about teaching organically, and I view this in two ways: where the game makes it obvious you need to do a thing that you then figure out how to do (this applies more to action games), and where you're given a guided tutorial that lets you experience things in gameplay as you learn. The latter would be best for your game.
So for example, start the game with higher base money but nothing unlocked. Then, in a step-by-step order, have them do the following:
1. Buy their first cell.
2. Do research to unlock their first set of isotopes.
3. Force the player to use the slowest isotope.
4. Teach them how to use speed controls.
5. When the cell's heat level reaches about half way, teach them about heat. When it gets to near full, force the player to eject and get cooling. Also make them buy a second cell. Should they lack enough money due to poor decisions, you can supplement them with the money they need to do all this.
6. From here, let the player continue playing on their own for a while, as they now have everything they would've had from the start. When they gain the ability to use an isotope that requires shielding, force them to eject a cell, buy the first shield and put in an isotope that requires it. You can do another supplement if they don't have enough.
7. After they have more than 2 cells and have access to materials meant to absorb heat, teach them that so they can see it in action (Make them eject what they have in the second node, supplement their money in the event they don't have enough).
And from here, you leave them alone. You've covered everything. :D
Iām a big fan of idle games, and this one already has a solid hook and a strong theme. The overall vibe works, the sound choices are effective, and the Geiger-style clicking is especially soothing. I can easily imagine someone tinkering with the systems for a long time.
The most convincing detail is that the Geiger clicks, spectra, decay heat, and economy all draw from the same isotope data instead of functioning as disconnected decorative systems. That cohesion makes the 43-isotope premise feel like a genuine simulation puzzle rather than science-themed flavor.
At this point, I would focus on polish and make the core hook feel a little more exciting and immediately rewarding. I would also strongly recommend an accessibility pass on the UI. There are too many similar blues and not enough contrast between the text and surrounding elements, so my eyes started to glaze over while trying to read everything.
If you have time to jump into a couple of quick matches, Iād love your first impressions of BEAT BAES. Riders pilot spinning battle mechs, build chaotic loadouts, and slam through fast, physics-driven battles. A short run is plenty, and the feedback form is the best place to tell me what hit and what missed.
Take a BAE for a spin Ā· Drop your first impressions
I appreciate that, looking forward to your updates as well!