itch.io

this is very nice. i look forward to a better balanced version where clicking to move around and eat stuff feels better.. (highlighting target.. etc.) spamming clicking and it not being clear when you can move again.. and if/when you've targeted something feels quite bad.

but iron that stuff out, the aesthetics and concept are really nice.

bro. way tl;dr.

you *really* need to learn the art of compression.

i'll pretend you did it ironically, since my original comment was about excess exposition.

narrative focus is just... no.

i'm sick of people trying to justify horrible design choices by hiding them behind "this is my vision"

you want a narrative focus because narrative is easy. anyone can vomit out boring-ass story that you care about and no one else gives a shit about.

what's difficult is telling a story organically. designing a fun game and balancing and pacing it well.

anyone can spam stupid childish garbage dialog.

"narrative focus" is a dumb excuse for being bad at game design.

the vibe coded descriptions of the upgrades are very annoying to read.

i've had to do passes over tooltips and descriptions in games and tool documentation i've vibe coded to remove the stupid LLM slop vagueness.

also, having a net money loss when you run out of energy and die is a horrible design choice.

also, i just *love* trying to clear a layer and my laser punching through and cutting the layer below, when i don't want that. really feels great when i'm trying to OCD'ly clear out layers in an organized way.

also you can cut away the ground right in front of the terminals and make dealing with them very annoying.

there were several other very annoying things and artifacts from this having very clearly been vibe coded. but i'll just say the stupid tooltips that make you scratch your head trying to figure out what an upgrade does are the first thing you need to.. and will fix.

intentional, eh?

i found it infuriating. i wanted to skip past all the stupid drivel as fast as humanly possible.

and everyone else will too, kid.

"escape" to exit skill tree.

lol.  that exits full screen.

also the sound effects and music were genuinely jarring and painful.

the music keeps skipping. i'm on a far better computer than you or anyone else reading this. i assure you of that.

cute vibe-coded project. you should use suno or something for the music though.

if you insist on AI-generated synthesized music, GPT Astra is the only model thus far that can do it really well. Fable sometimes scratched the surface of something good, but Astra does it a whole tier better

terrible interface.

the abilities in the lower right have their descriptions/stats cut off...

you get an absolute 20/10 from me though cuz of those "guys with hats" that we get to kill.

you and i are the same.

art and animation is great. the theme is an awesome idea.

the UI needs major work. there are a ton of weird illogical things like the control panel... why is it even 'x'-able when any zoom in or out brings it back.. and you'd never want to close it anyway. also there's all this ore/fuel/etc. stuff that isn't really indicated anywhere. the control panel should.. kind of obviously be showing how much ore you have? and ingots... you're getting these random weird notifications that you earned ingots.. but the control panel just shows the ores... these omissions are very weird and make me wonder if i'm missing something big

simply put, there's nothing going on here. there's no core mechanic. nothing to entice the player. if they've played 400,000 other incrementals.. what about this is unique or interesting?

and even if they haven't, what about this would get them into the genre?

i know this is a difficult thing to nail. i am in the process of several projects that i'm struggling with this very issue right now.

boring tbh.

wishlisted

sorry but if a dev asks ppl to go on discord for game updates and info, i and any rational gamer on Earth is 100% out. absolutely 100%.

discord is a chat room. it is not a forum or streaming news bulletin board. 

people who use it for those things are basically expecting ppl to log onto a chat room and scroll and search through thousands of pages of chat room logs for information. 

and the fact that they don't understand this is always an excellent signal for how badly designed and managed the game will be

was really great. was disappointed to not see a steam link so i'd know if there were updates. (nothing on itch facilitates keeping an eye on a game)

maybe by luck i'll see you on a subreddit or something. when you think about it, it's really bad planning on your part. you did the job of reaching a potential player.. and didn't put anything in to hook them into your update pipeline. so all that work to catch attention was completely wasted.

weird over engineered UI for a simple thing like the upgrades section. pinned/etc. is just totally unnecessary.

also just not a huge fan of the UI in general. everything that opens up is much larger than it needs to be for the content within it, meaning it just ends up blocking stuff behind it that you might have been looking at.

there's just a lot of egregious UI sins here. a few too many for me to stick with it. but i'll check back in in a month or so and see how things are looking.

best of luck

nice. you gonna expand it more and add prestige etc.?

great music. who/what made it?

there's a little thing running around on the screen.... and there's some.. art behind it..  and a currency is ticking up.

what exactly is going on?

the lowest tier unit just sits there and waits for them to come to him before he fights... and the 3rd unit.. walks to the right and ignores all enemies.

the help says "drag to reposition" but literally no units were draggable. whenever i clicked and dragged it just dragged the camera left and right which wasn't necessary anyway.

i like the art, very servicable pixel art. but you need to fix the bugs i mentioned above

i'm not a fan of the cursor. it looks fine and works great in mining runs.. but when you're in the upgrade/menu/UI stuff and it's the bottom tip of the pickaxe that targets for clicking.. something about that feels overly specific and clunky.

i like the music. not sure how well the genres being mixed here mesh together though. but i'd probably buy this if you put on steam to try it out.

differences with you aside, i do have this wishlisted on steam lol. i'm semi-hoping you leave "watts as a unit of energy" in the final version cuz i'll know you left it that way purely out of spite at me and i'll consider it a semi-credit.

but you'll get my $ regardless

what even are you talking about. it was obviously a mistake... they were using it to refer to energy lol. they obviously meant a joule. and this is a common mistake. the SPACEPLAN guy made the same mistake lol.

this is such unbelievable hedging. it's not that big a deal he made the mistake. and it wasn't that big a deal that i pointed it out so he could fix it. but hedging and pretending it's not a mistake.. well it was bad faith by the author and it's bad faith by you.

what are you talkihng about? did you even play the game? he was using watt to refer to energy.. and that was clearly a mistake on his part.

how did you end up thinking he just meant the word "watt" with no relation to how it relates to energy/power?

Yep I tested it on Steam and it worked perfectly. I wishlisted it too

great. it's a cool idea so i look forward to it! i'm actually talking to itch support about getting that guy who follows me around banned. lol

it was here, on itch

the full screen feature takes over the full screen but the game window stays the same size

wishlisted

some feedback

the upgrade that pays you for marked bomb cells should probably have an additional upgrade tier beyond/behind it that gives you the payout whether you marked it or not. it's silly to be marking bombs you know are bombs.

and clicking a numbered cell that has its # amount of bombs marked should auto clear every cell around it. in regular minesweeper i think this is done by right+left simul clicking on the cell but it could be anything. it could even be a regular left click and it wouldn't override anything

also left clicking a bomb-marked cell should do nothing. it should block it. (just in case of a misclick)

You're thanking him, but I gave you genuinely honest feedback. The guy who told you I go around leaving hate comments is just a guy who didn't a comment I left once and now follows me around and trolls because he can't get over it.

boring. i liked the aesthetics though. i found the main gameplay loop very boring

yeah i figured the solver was doing a brute force. do you use any heuristics or does it just brute force every permutation? cool, either way. i like putting simulation stuff in my games too. just getting an AI to play snake was a huge pain

whoah!!! cool!

i like the idea a lot but finding the optimal configuration for a given piece set was absolutely a brute force affair. since it's solving for the optimal config, it would be nice if you added an upgrade that let the user see.. or at least get a hint at the optimal config.

Lol I hit a nerve I guess.

Nope. I provide valid criticism and praise.

Anyone reading this exchange notice that this Varii guy went ad hominem.. rather than responding to the content of my post, which was valid and accurate. And probably useful to the dev of the game.

Nope. Not the case. I criticized a bad element of a game and this guy got butthurt because of the way I worded something and had that like irresistable urge to talk shit. It's been a back and forth stemming from that.

Trust me, it's this Varii guy that is the immature troll.

didn't have to imagine anything. It was just you.. very apparently.