You should be able to designate personal resource over area resource to be used
Also, forbidden resources should still be used in case of emergency (if not doing so would cause you to die), as forbidding is the only way to prevent consumption when your water/food level is mildly lower than full
In what situation would you want to use personal resources before area resources?
There was a big debate about the DoNotUse priority when it was first added. It was decided that having it still consume them when you get low makes it way to easy to min/max them. Only a small percentage of players ever change priority away from auto, and most of those that do would rather keep it as a bit of a challenge to manage.
For example air when there's no (or insufficient) generation, but you can still make some with your rover lets you stretch it out a bit more. (relevant in the very start and at the end of mining in laurion)
Also, it should at least not add the DoNotUse to the time remaining, or
Hmmm. I do agree it could extend your maximum survival time in those situations. But I think it's only a very small percentage of players who would want to micromanage to that level. I'll make a note to look at it at some point, but I'm not sure how I'd do it without further complicating the UI.
Fair enough. Though as it stands, the mining requires even more micromanagement (or an enormous waste of time and management while throwing yourself at it)
Great game! It's great how much old areas expand over time as new paths open up and new resources become relevant. I liked Increlution a lot and so far this is better.
Some more specific comments: 1. I initially got worried that I was going to run out of air and die when the Area air in Talos got exhausted, and didn't understand why the air tanks weren't resupplying it. IIRC my personal air meter wasn't visible yet at that point. 2. It would be nice to be able to turn off the air recycler in Laurion, or have it turn off when all the air is full. Or rebrand it as something else where it makes more sense that we can't turn it off. 3. It's surprising to me that the water recycler doesn't use power (in any location).
1. The personal air meter becomes visible as soon as you put on the emergency suit. If you haven't done that by the time area air runs out, you will die.
2. It's already mentioned that there are some emergency backup systems in Laurion that you simply can't turn off because they're considered essential. The air recycler (running at minimum power) is one of them.
3. I've planned to make the water recycler use power for a while now, but was always wary of making such a huge change to balance. I now have an automated balance tester, which should make it much easier to test that type of change without having to get people to play through it and get their opinions of how much easier/harder it makes the game.
this is great!! i'm not too far into the game but it's SUPER fun. i just discovered the time loop mechanic which is cool, i love time loop games!!! i can't wait to learn more about what is going on!! :D
Very fun game but there are a few bugs, after finding the passage from Talos to Santorini I can't go from the Dam to Laurion, or from Santorini back to the Dam
I am not a native English speaker and understood almost everything. Very well written and has a really nice atmosphere. Reminds me of SOMA, being stranded alone and figuring out what happened or how to escape.
As horror and idle gamer this is perfectly in the middle.
Will join your discord after this comment and check for known bugs or suggestions. Some people already are suggesting a lot of stuff here, some of these suggestion would ruin the game experience for me. Since you already created this amazing game, you know your path. Dont let anyone fool you.
I really enjoy what you’ve got here with Terraformental. I want to qualify that statement- I made an account just to express it. I’ve been around the block on gaming. I was old when the earth was young. Cookie clicker, Adventure Capitalist, Theory of Magic, the idle genre, the incremental genre, the stories written as light novels rather than games, they were new once, I’ve witnessed their rise. You’ve made something good here. That’s not to say other people aren’t making good things either though. I'm quite pedantic so I'll leave a long ramble here, but that's the crux of my message.
One perspective of gaming is that it's a learning experience. In reinforcement learning, there’s a dichotomy of choice between exploration and exploitation. Choosing to acquire new information vs utilization of old information. However, you aren’t just making one choice, but one among a long sequence of choices. Often, they feed in to each other. You explore to find things to exploit- you exploit to be well enough off to explore. It is a dynamic process where you balance and evaluate both things. The through line underpinning it all is time, tempo. In this game, it’s a bottleneck, a duration. In other games, it’s an evaluation on what duration is shorter to elapse- to prestige or to just keep grinding- what is the faster pace.
In practical terms of what I mean with what is existing in the game- let’s talk about the water recycler. There is a rate of water consumption. Similarly, there is a rate of water creation through the recycler. There are three states those numbers can be in- deficit, balance, and surplus. Whether the artifact or quick recycler is acquired, it shifts it from a deficit to a surplus- from a finite span of time to an indefinite span. If food, water, and power are all surplus, like in the barracks of Santorini- you are leaning on exploitation, you don’t need to loop. So you then don’t need to exploit effective choices to get to Santorini quicker to have more time to explore. Even what it is that you exploit is a choice. “What happens if I arrive sooner? What happens if I arrive later? What sequence of events are necessary for something here? What gaps do I have space to do other things with?” You might recognize the resemblance to Majoras Mask, if that is in your pool of experience.
Oh, the story and fantasy is nice too. The overarching goal, space, future, terraforming a planet. It’s cool, you don’t see it much. The story is really important. It gives you something to read while you’re counting down the timer. It gives you some scaffolding to extrapolate for exploration and exploitation. Getting a solar panel eventually, and what that means for the choice of rover attachment, and how that impacts the routes you can take. This game is certainly like a puzzle/adventure game. Like games of old, a cutscene or some dialogue is a reward, is content, is enjoyable as well as connected to the gameplay. It gives a fantasy for the mind to run with and speculate in imagination. To tap into the joy of imagining a station that you power up with solar panels, food generation, water generation, air.
Well, the game seems in good hands dev. The artifact you dig out being optional, the intent for different routes, the exclusivity of options, the limitations of resources, packaging tasks to recognize that repeating them gets old, improving at some tasks... lots of intelligent design with these choices. Maybe some day you'll discover that the starting area is boring, and maybe you'll introduce an artifact that lets you have a different spawn location. Your choice to expand breadth and depth by revisiting the previous station helps keep all options fresh for possibility and exploration- as opposed to a content treadmill of power creep- while simultaneously the text and cues of the game give meaningful directions on what to explore rather than running in circles doing arbitrary tasks like staying in the starter station for 5 hours to discover something.
Glad I got to play it before it ends up having a price tag.
I need to add, I *also* made my account just to comment on this game.
It's one of the few "loop-incrementals" that I totally like , mostly thanks to it's unique theme and resource management. Most loop-crementals have a big issue called "you cannot go farther, now repeat these actions soo you get more stuff later for 3 hours"
This feels more like an adventure game than a boring slog. Every run you either discover new things, get better on old things, or try to get a permament upgrade (like the artifact #2).
And the story, hoo boy... it's nothing to write home about (cuz it's incomplete), But it's nice to have something to read about. My only issues in this game:
-Add Codex for all the lore interactions we can find .(even better, LET TIME MOVE while we read soo we can review our notes while the game plays itself early-game)
-mid-late game (for the demo...) let us unlock some way to "program" our tasks (like a route) soo we don't have to manually play early-game (Yes I know it's gonna be a headache to program thanks to loop-completion shaving off many seconds every time we play the game, but I think it's doable)
-More puzzles like the Dam that need to be only completed once.(unlike most people, I like having an "objective" that requires us to do specific tasks at specific times in order to complete it, and I didn't mind needing 3 loops to do it)
This is a fantastic game so far and I'm eager to see more. It's a great infusion of soft incremental mechanics into what it essentially an adventure/puzzle game. I entered a fugue state and lost most of my day to finishing it.
Having a huge initial boost of familiarity on first completion of an action is the perfect way to fix Increlution's biggest problem, which was the need to grind so many loops to break speed/efficiency thresholds.
I was initially bummed that this game functionally has no automation, but after only a couple of loops I understood why. It's (mostly) unnecessary since you don't need to grind for basically anything. The additional familiarity bonus from repeat loops definitely helps long term and gives you breathing room, but that initial 30% bump is always enough to get you moving on to your next tasks.
Loop-persistent actions acting as single-use time sinks are another great way to avoid needing to grind over a wall more than once.
I'd like to see some way to further reduce manually replaying most of Talos station at the beginning of a loop because even after the existing combined actions it's a lot of unengaging clicking for zero benefit once you've mapped it out. A combined action called something like "Wake Up and Prepare" that one-clicks getting out of the pod and drinking, fixing the upper floor, grabbing initial stockpiles of Basic Food/Water Pouches, getting the suit, and repairing the rover would be a huge improvement. The protein bars, regulator, generator, and modifying the rover could stay completely manual to still give the player options before heading out, as well as not holding their hand about making sure they're topped up on resources if they're being maximally efficient.
It would also be nice to have some kind of log of past text boxes in case the player misses one or wants to re-read them. It's understandable that most of them go away as you progress but the idea that they're unavailable without restarting is a little unfortunate.
Okay, I completed all the content so far. Gotta say, absolutely PHENOMENAL game so far. It scratches like all my itches when it comes to like, idler/incrementals. And man I cannot wait to see what comes next.
Pretty much maxed out on everything I can until another update. Really enjoyed it, but I wish there was more automation for areas you already cleared but still need to do each loop for materials. Like, if there were a pre-set route you could program and edit to auto-play at the start of each loop. It gets pretty tedious leaving the starting area each time, picking up extra fuel cells, etc.
Anyway, I hope we get to see more! I'd love to find out what happens next. :)
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very nice game
You should be able to designate personal resource over area resource to be used
Also, forbidden resources should still be used in case of emergency (if not doing so would cause you to die), as forbidding is the only way to prevent consumption when your water/food level is mildly lower than full
In what situation would you want to use personal resources before area resources?
There was a big debate about the DoNotUse priority when it was first added. It was decided that having it still consume them when you get low makes it way to easy to min/max them. Only a small percentage of players ever change priority away from auto, and most of those that do would rather keep it as a bit of a challenge to manage.
For example air when there's no (or insufficient) generation, but you can still make some with your rover lets you stretch it out a bit more. (relevant in the very start and at the end of mining in laurion)
Also, it should at least not add the DoNotUse to the time remaining, or
Hmmm. I do agree it could extend your maximum survival time in those situations. But I think it's only a very small percentage of players who would want to micromanage to that level. I'll make a note to look at it at some point, but I'm not sure how I'd do it without further complicating the UI.
Fair enough. Though as it stands, the mining requires even more micromanagement (or an enormous waste of time and management while throwing yourself at it)
maybe double clicking an air tank when the internal air tank's full (or almost full) would add the surplus to area resources?
Also: maybe add a "unlock uranium vault" impossible action to remind people about what they're supposed to do when they come back after the update.
Great game! It's great how much old areas expand over time as new paths open up and new resources become relevant. I liked Increlution a lot and so far this is better.
Some more specific comments:
1. I initially got worried that I was going to run out of air and die when the Area air in Talos got exhausted, and didn't understand why the air tanks weren't resupplying it. IIRC my personal air meter wasn't visible yet at that point.
2. It would be nice to be able to turn off the air recycler in Laurion, or have it turn off when all the air is full. Or rebrand it as something else where it makes more sense that we can't turn it off.
3. It's surprising to me that the water recycler doesn't use power (in any location).
1. I think it's clear the point is to get the hell away from there, and it does make it.
However it should be clearer that death is not final.
1. The personal air meter becomes visible as soon as you put on the emergency suit. If you haven't done that by the time area air runs out, you will die.
2. It's already mentioned that there are some emergency backup systems in Laurion that you simply can't turn off because they're considered essential. The air recycler (running at minimum power) is one of them.
3. I've planned to make the water recycler use power for a while now, but was always wary of making such a huge change to balance. I now have an automated balance tester, which should make it much easier to test that type of change without having to get people to play through it and get their opinions of how much easier/harder it makes the game.
4. It would be nice if you could see the rover's resources (particularly power) while it is parked at Laurion (or elsewhere I assume)
5. It's odd that during the middle of traveling I can still do actions only available at the start of the route
this is great!! i'm not too far into the game but it's SUPER fun. i just discovered the time loop mechanic which is cool, i love time loop games!!! i can't wait to learn more about what is going on!! :D
Very fun game but there are a few bugs, after finding the passage from Talos to Santorini I can't go from the Dam to Laurion, or from Santorini back to the Dam
Those aren't bugs, just content which hasn't been added yet. Those will be added in v0.4. Glad you're enjoying the game though.
I used to be able to do those things before finding the Talos to Santorini passage though, now I can't
There has never been a way to drive from the dam back to Laurion. Nor has there ever been a way to drive from Santorini back to the dam.
I swear there used to be, restarting now to check
Terraformental: I'm going mental
Amazing game! 35 Loops to finish current content.
I am not a native English speaker and understood almost everything. Very well written and has a really nice atmosphere. Reminds me of SOMA, being stranded alone and figuring out what happened or how to escape.
As horror and idle gamer this is perfectly in the middle.
Will join your discord after this comment and check for known bugs or suggestions. Some people already are suggesting a lot of stuff here, some of these suggestion would ruin the game experience for me. Since you already created this amazing game, you know your path. Dont let anyone fool you.
I was so sad when I realized the game isn't done so I can't find out how it ends yet... you better finish this game!
this is great!!!
This is super fun, please continue. Do you need any help?
this simulates the argument I had with myself earlier quite nicely
the ten minute side quest to find the rover was wild though
I really enjoy what you’ve got here with Terraformental. I want to qualify that statement- I made an account just to express it. I’ve been around the block on gaming. I was old when the earth was young. Cookie clicker, Adventure Capitalist, Theory of Magic, the idle genre, the incremental genre, the stories written as light novels rather than games, they were new once, I’ve witnessed their rise. You’ve made something good here. That’s not to say other people aren’t making good things either though. I'm quite pedantic so I'll leave a long ramble here, but that's the crux of my message.
One perspective of gaming is that it's a learning experience. In reinforcement learning, there’s a dichotomy of choice between exploration and exploitation. Choosing to acquire new information vs utilization of old information. However, you aren’t just making one choice, but one among a long sequence of choices. Often, they feed in to each other. You explore to find things to exploit- you exploit to be well enough off to explore. It is a dynamic process where you balance and evaluate both things. The through line underpinning it all is time, tempo. In this game, it’s a bottleneck, a duration. In other games, it’s an evaluation on what duration is shorter to elapse- to prestige or to just keep grinding- what is the faster pace.
In practical terms of what I mean with what is existing in the game- let’s talk about the water recycler. There is a rate of water consumption. Similarly, there is a rate of water creation through the recycler. There are three states those numbers can be in- deficit, balance, and surplus. Whether the artifact or quick recycler is acquired, it shifts it from a deficit to a surplus- from a finite span of time to an indefinite span. If food, water, and power are all surplus, like in the barracks of Santorini- you are leaning on exploitation, you don’t need to loop. So you then don’t need to exploit effective choices to get to Santorini quicker to have more time to explore. Even what it is that you exploit is a choice. “What happens if I arrive sooner? What happens if I arrive later? What sequence of events are necessary for something here? What gaps do I have space to do other things with?” You might recognize the resemblance to Majoras Mask, if that is in your pool of experience.
Oh, the story and fantasy is nice too. The overarching goal, space, future, terraforming a planet. It’s cool, you don’t see it much. The story is really important. It gives you something to read while you’re counting down the timer. It gives you some scaffolding to extrapolate for exploration and exploitation. Getting a solar panel eventually, and what that means for the choice of rover attachment, and how that impacts the routes you can take. This game is certainly like a puzzle/adventure game. Like games of old, a cutscene or some dialogue is a reward, is content, is enjoyable as well as connected to the gameplay. It gives a fantasy for the mind to run with and speculate in imagination. To tap into the joy of imagining a station that you power up with solar panels, food generation, water generation, air.
Well, the game seems in good hands dev. The artifact you dig out being optional, the intent for different routes, the exclusivity of options, the limitations of resources, packaging tasks to recognize that repeating them gets old, improving at some tasks... lots of intelligent design with these choices. Maybe some day you'll discover that the starting area is boring, and maybe you'll introduce an artifact that lets you have a different spawn location. Your choice to expand breadth and depth by revisiting the previous station helps keep all options fresh for possibility and exploration- as opposed to a content treadmill of power creep- while simultaneously the text and cues of the game give meaningful directions on what to explore rather than running in circles doing arbitrary tasks like staying in the starter station for 5 hours to discover something.
Glad I got to play it before it ends up having a price tag.
I need to add, I *also* made my account just to comment on this game.
It's one of the few "loop-incrementals" that I totally like , mostly thanks to it's unique theme and resource management. Most loop-crementals have a big issue called "you cannot go farther, now repeat these actions soo you get more stuff later for 3 hours"
This feels more like an adventure game than a boring slog. Every run you either discover new things, get better on old things, or try to get a permament upgrade (like the artifact #2).
And the story, hoo boy... it's nothing to write home about (cuz it's incomplete), But it's nice to have something to read about. My only issues in this game:
-Add Codex for all the lore interactions we can find .(even better, LET TIME MOVE while we read soo we can review our notes while the game plays itself early-game)
-mid-late game (for the demo...) let us unlock some way to "program" our tasks (like a route) soo we don't have to manually play early-game (Yes I know it's gonna be a headache to program thanks to loop-completion shaving off many seconds every time we play the game, but I think it's doable)
-More puzzles like the Dam that need to be only completed once.(unlike most people, I like having an "objective" that requires us to do specific tasks at specific times in order to complete it, and I didn't mind needing 3 loops to do it)
This is a fantastic game so far and I'm eager to see more. It's a great infusion of soft incremental mechanics into what it essentially an adventure/puzzle game. I entered a fugue state and lost most of my day to finishing it.
Having a huge initial boost of familiarity on first completion of an action is the perfect way to fix Increlution's biggest problem, which was the need to grind so many loops to break speed/efficiency thresholds.
I was initially bummed that this game functionally has no automation, but after only a couple of loops I understood why. It's (mostly) unnecessary since you don't need to grind for basically anything. The additional familiarity bonus from repeat loops definitely helps long term and gives you breathing room, but that initial 30% bump is always enough to get you moving on to your next tasks.
Loop-persistent actions acting as single-use time sinks are another great way to avoid needing to grind over a wall more than once.
I'd like to see some way to further reduce manually replaying most of Talos station at the beginning of a loop because even after the existing combined actions it's a lot of unengaging clicking for zero benefit once you've mapped it out. A combined action called something like "Wake Up and Prepare" that one-clicks getting out of the pod and drinking, fixing the upper floor, grabbing initial stockpiles of Basic Food/Water Pouches, getting the suit, and repairing the rover would be a huge improvement. The protein bars, regulator, generator, and modifying the rover could stay completely manual to still give the player options before heading out, as well as not holding their hand about making sure they're topped up on resources if they're being maximally efficient.
It would also be nice to have some kind of log of past text boxes in case the player misses one or wants to re-read them. It's understandable that most of them go away as you progress but the idea that they're unavailable without restarting is a little unfortunate.
Okay, I completed all the content so far. Gotta say, absolutely PHENOMENAL game so far. It scratches like all my itches when it comes to like, idler/incrementals. And man I cannot wait to see what comes next.
Pretty much maxed out on everything I can until another update. Really enjoyed it, but I wish there was more automation for areas you already cleared but still need to do each loop for materials. Like, if there were a pre-set route you could program and edit to auto-play at the start of each loop. It gets pretty tedious leaving the starting area each time, picking up extra fuel cells, etc.
Anyway, I hope we get to see more! I'd love to find out what happens next. :)