itch.io

Hey, thanks for playing! Right now it’s English and Russian. I’m planning more languages for Steam, and French is on of the crucial one's in  my list.

Sure, you can email me at disagreeg12162@gmail.com.

About batteries: on “Use it” they pass power straight through, so spare power gets wasted on purpose, since managing it is part of the puzzle. If you want a battery to store power, set an Output limit on it (anything above the limit gets stored) or switch it to “Hold it”.

dude that factory is insane, I love seeing the flow laid out like that.

The substation idea is cool. 

Sandbox is a fun tho, noted. Thanks for sticking with it all the way, seriously means a lot

wow, this is honestly one of the coolest things I’ve seen someone build in it. you can really read it left to right like a flow diagram, power on one side, sorting in the middle, recovery at the end

and it means a lot that it clicks with what you studied. turning waste back into resources is exactly the idea the whole game grew from, so seeing someone with an actual MFA background build it this way is kind of a dream

haha yeah, there’s more. The full game has three more places after it, each one bigger and with its own new problems. that will be the Steam version

and about the hub and foundry: if you delete one, its recruits / arrays go with it. right now the warning for that is a small line on the machine’s card and it’s easy to miss, so you made me realise it needs to be way louder. I’m working on a proper popup in the middle of the screen that tells you exactly what you’d lose before anything goes

Thanks, that's a really good catch. I didn't know every HTML game on itch shares the same storage, so if someone has played a lot of other games the space can already be full. A full save here is only about 120 KB, but I'll still move saves to IndexedDB in the next update and keep old saves working.

Thanks for writing this up.

About a static split: I actually built a "fixed amount" mode for splitters a while ago, but when I played with it I didn't find a real use for it, so I took it out. I'll take another look at it tho, since you're not the first to ask. For now, the output limit on a Power Storage is the way to get a fixed number as you told.

The recycler: it needs power for every kg it works. If it gets less power than the trash coming in needs, the part it can't cover goes out the trash output unrecycled. So when you see trash coming out, that recycler is short on power. It also happens right after a power dip, because the trash that piled up during the dip comes out as trash once the power is back.

Light and heavy work the same way. With full power the Weight Sorter splits 50/50. The less power it gets, the more of it comes out heavy.

You can see both of these for yourself in a practice room. Open the Codex, go to Machines, and press TRY IT on the Recycler or the Weight Sorter.

That's kind of how it's meant to feel there. Generators are capped on purpose, so power is the thing you have to work for mid game. The Grid Foundry is the way out: batteries and steel from the recycling tree turn into permanent power. In the full game that part is a lot more balanced, there are more ways to make power, so it doesn't choke you like this. Thanks for the detailed write-up tho.

Ha, thank you, that's a great catch:). Yes, that's an Outreach Hub feeding itself through a Crew Junction, and I'm really glad you found it.

I made that on purpose. I got a lot of reports about loops going wrong around Outreach Hubs, so I made the hub work when its own output comes back into it through a junction or splitter. It's a placeholder for now. I'll keep improving it and may change how it works later, so it could behave differently in a future update.

I tested your setup and  this is a real bug and your report is spot on. When a sorter has a pile waiting in its input, it tries to split the whole pile with just one moment's worth of power, so almost all of it comes out heavy (or steel on the eddy). Once the heavy side backs up even a little, the pile never clears and light drops to nothing, even with plenty of power. That's why a new one did the same. I'm fixing it so a backlog still splits 50/50, just at the speed your power allows. Until the update, the trick above does help: make sure heavy/steel always has somewhere to drain, or cut the input for a moment so the pile clears. Really appreciate you taking the time to report it.

Not exactly, but there's Full Circle. Finish the Plan in the full game and you can start over in a bigger world where every place is refilled with even more trash. You also bring a lot of bonuses over from your previous world.

Haha , love the Blender comparison, wiring nodes together is just so satisfying. Thanks for checking it out! If you want a peek at where it's heading, there's a trailer up on the page too :)

Thanks a lot for featuring it, that's awesome.

Not a glitch. CI never gets spent. The numbers on the machine tree are milestones: once your CI reaches that number the skill is yours, and you keep all of it. Money skills are the ones that actually cost you money. The tree shows that number like a price though, so I totally get why it looked like a bug.

Thanks for playing all the way through, and for writing it up properly! Thanks for the balance feedback too, that's really useful to hear from someone who finished it. I tested your Recycler setup. With the trash output unwired it keeps recycling at full speed, but the leftover trash piles up inside it, and once that's full it stops taking more from whatever feeds it. The card does say BACKED UP, but in grey, and it doesn't count as needing attention, so it's really easy to miss. A red mark on the full socket is a good idea.

Thanks, this is a really useful list.

The wires: you're right, and it's a bug. A curved wire only picks up clicks near a handful of points along it, so on a long wire most of it can't be clicked. I'll fix it so the whole wire works.

Switching power when a pile runs out: the full game has priority splitters for exactly that. They feed one side first and send everything to the other side once the first can't use it. They aren't in the demo though.

The softlock: I tried to cover it. When the Wastelands run dry, Greenhaven opens for free, and if every place in the demo is bare the Plan finishes for you. The full game also has Clean Index makers that don't need trash at all.

Outreach Hub: fair. It's the one workforce source that needs nothing from the trash. There's a cap of 10 and each recruit costs more than the last, but I'll look at whether it's still too easy.

Wider splitters and showing what's backing up: both good ideas and I've written them down. The cards do name a missing input already, but a bar that shows what's actually sitting inside would be much clearer.

Sensors and controllers is a bigger one. I like it, but I can't promise it yet.

Click the Power Splitter, and you will find the ratios in the upper-right part of the screen in the Inspector.

Trash Cleaner needs workers to dig, and you can't sweep a site by hand while a cleaner stands on it. so click one cleaner and press DEMOLISH twice (it's free), then sweep that site until you have 1.5 CI. buy Volunteers in the Machine Tree (bottom left), wire Volunteer > Cleaner > Landfill and hit BURN. after that it's Market (5 CI), then Recycling (16 CI) for the Recycler

thanks, really glad you're enjoying it! you're right, the tutorial card was sitting right where you'd put the next machine. I'll fix it so the card moves out of the way of both ends of the wire, and it'll be in the next update. until then, if you place the market below or to the left of the cleaner the card stays out of the way

Good catch, thank you. The top bar rounds up, so 15.96 CI shows as 16 while Recycling costs exactly 16. I'll change it to round down so it never shows more than you really have.

Ha, you can actually have both! A Landfill takes recycled trash too, and it burns for almost 3x the Clean Index of raw trash. Markets for money, Landfill for CI, and how you split it is up to you.

Ha, this made my day. Unreal blueprints are a special kind of pain, so I'm glad these are the fun kind. Hope the healing goes well :)

Thanks for writing all this out, it was a really fun list to read. Cleaning up your own mess is kind of the heart of the game, so the pollution idea especially stuck with me. I can't promise any of it yet, but it's all written down and I'll be chewing on it.

It's already there. The AI Disclosure field on the page says AI assistance, and the description says it too

Thanks. I’m putting a lot of effort into it, so I’m really glad to hear that.

Thanks!  Nope, I’m not the developer of Blackstart and honestly, this is actually the first time I’ve heard of that game. Maybe we just have a similar style haha.

No worries, i didn't read it as a gripe. and yeah, that's part of why this one is plain html and js with no engine at all.

Yeah, I actually already have something along those lines planned for the full release. Thanks for the suggestion.

Absolutely! Arabic will be added in the full release, and it will be professionally localized by human translators to make sure the quality and meaning are right.

I totally agree with you about the UI part, and as you can see in this screenshot, I’m already working on improving it.

And honestly, I really appreciate you taking the time to write such a thoughtful comment. It means a lot that you still enjoyed the game despite its current rough edges, and especially that you can see the potential in it.

Doomsayers unfortunately are everywhere :), but either way, I’m going to keep developing, experimenting, and improving the game.

Thanks again for the kind words and encouragement. I really appreciate it.

Ha, thank you. Grid snap keeps coming up, you're the second person to ask for it. No date, but it's near the top of the list. In the meantime, holding Shift and dragging on empty ground selects a group, and Shift-click adds one machine at a time.

Hi Alfadiel, thanks for reaching out. I'd rather keep first contact here or by email than on LinkedIn. If you can say who you're with and what kind of collaboration you have in mind, I'll read it properly.

Thanks for the detailed feedback! I will release the full game on Steam, and these issues won’t happen there. I really appreciate you taking the time to test and report them!

You have no idea how much this means to me:). Thank you so much!

WF - WorkForce, the blue wires

Yeah, you’ll unlock that after acquiring the Staffing skill in the Machine tree, but make sure it isn’t completely free. You’ll need to connect a WF wire to it for it to collect for you.

Thanks, and glad the demo was fun.

I have not had a proper look at either of these yet, so I am not going to guess at causes. Both are written down and they are the next thing I sit down with. The outreach one has come up before and I still owe it a real answer. The overflow loop is new to me, and you have described it clearly enough that I know where to start, which saves me a lot.

If you still have that factory, a screenshot of the bit that went strange would help a lot, so I can see how the power was wired around it.

This one is going in. It is an easy fix.

Thanks for writing it out as steps. That made it obvious what to build.

Good to know the splitter version works, and thanks for saying which shape you ended up with.

I want to check the loop detection idea before I agree with it, because I do not think there is any. As far as I know nothing in the game refuses a loop or zeroes one. So if a direct loop went dead there is probably another reason, and I would rather find it than guess at it.

One thing worth trying while I look. An outreach centre needs workforce and energy together. If it runs short of energy it banks workforce until it cannot hold any more, then deliberately holds its own input cable so the workforce goes somewhere useful instead. From outside that looks exactly like the line dying for no reason. If your block is tight on power, that could be it rather than the wiring. Worth watching whether the ones that go quiet are the ones furthest from your generators.

That is a guess until I have sat down with your shape though, so treat it as something to try rather than an answer.

Either way, if a machine can hold its own cable and say nothing about it, that is on me and not on your wiring. It should tell you.

Thanks! That's great to hear.

About your reports:

1. I can see the screenshot. I'm not exactly sure about this, but it may happen because the Cell Assembler is being overfilled with aluminium or hazardous waste. It might not be the batteries you made that are filling the machine's capacity, but the aluminium or hazardous waste instead. You can check this, btw. Just disconnect the hazardous waste and aluminium wires one by one. If that's the case, the Cell Assembler's capacity should decrease. I'll check it on my side as well.
2. This may be a game mechanic issue where the Outreach Hub can't feed itself. I'll check that part too, because you're not the only one who has reported this. I'll make sure to look into it in the upcoming updates.

Thank you for taking the time to report these issues!

Thank you, that is genuinely nice to read, and I am glad the sound is landing.

On moving the tips and the groves: they are staying put, and here is the honest reason. They are not machines, they are the ground. The trash is where the trash is, and working out how to reach it is the constraint the whole game is built on. Let people drag the ground around and where the trash sits stops being a question at all.

What I can fix is the layout itself, it  will be even better in upcoming updates.