I absolutely love the idea of this! I haven't gotten a chance to see all of it yet, as the glitch I see mentioned below happened to me and I could harvest resources all throughout the rover journey. I'll include a screenshot of the victory in case it helps. I'd like to see this idea expanded, and believe that with some polishing this could be better than Increlution. Keep it up!
(As you can see, I still have access to "Take Water Pouch", and "Synthesise Food", even though I took the power cell and left the start. I'll replay and attempt to figure out what triggered the glitch...)
Edit: Naturally dying seems to fix the problem for the next loops if it occurs.
I'm starting to wonder if this might be a browser-dependant issue or something... I might have to add in some debug logging at some point to help track down the issue.
Anyways, glad you enjoyed it. I really appreciate the screenshot and the offer to replay to help track it down!
it doesn't seem like you're supposed to be able to grab more food and water once you're piloting (since you "stockpile"), but with the amount of time it takes to get through the piloting section it's nearly impossible not to run out of water at the very least
very fun otherwise though! my first time playing a game of this genre, it was enjoyable
You're right that you're not supposed to be able to get more food or water after leaving the facility. It is difficult to survive - definitely not impossible, but judging by the number of people commenting on it, I probably will tweak it slightly at some point.
just did a fresh run through the game and the start new loop and restart from the beginning buttons still don't work hopefully I'll remember to come check on this game again in a week or two it's got serious potential
Cool take on the loop/task based subgenre of idle games. Some feedback points:
Fullscreen doesn't actually make the game fullscreen. It would have been nice to have bigger UI especially for reading the story text. My eyes got a bit tired by the end
Some of the piloting sections take a bit long while you don't have anything to do but wait for the next story beat
Some of the actions stay while it doesn't make much sense for them to stay. Such as taking water pouches from the workshop while you're long gone in the rover
The food/water collection get a bit tedious throughout the piloting section. Although I'm guessing you have already planned automation for repeated tasks in later stages of the game
Aside from the UI size none of these were that detrimental to the preview demo but would be nice to see those polished out in a final version. I enjoyed the space theming and plot of strange artifacts causing shenanigans. On top of that the story beats are well written. Keep it up!
UI/Text scaling of some form is definitely on the list to add in. I'm unsure for now what form that'll take, but at worst I'll throw a text size slider in the options.
I may try to tweak the timing on the rover sections, but I don't think they can get much shorter without making water drain faster, or nerfing the water pouches. And they're already annoying to keep collecting all the time.
Water pouches should disable once you leave in the rover. I've seen a couple people mentioning that, so probably a niche bug I've missed.
As previous - the food and water tasks should disable once you leave. You're supposed to have stockpiled all the resources you need (except air) before you leave.
There's two fullscreen buttons, the blue unity one, and a fairly transparent itch one I think - clicking the unity one should make it proper fullscreen, although it doesn't change much
I played it again: The first time I played I encountered a bug without knowing it. Most of the actions didn't remove themselves when they should.(I scavenged the food synthesizer but could still scavenge for food, I hacked the doors, but could still destroy them, I left on the rover, but could still gather food and water...)
Not bad at all. Water still seems to be the limiting factor (wonder why you can't just haul the entire crate onto the rover, weight constraints?), beat it in 2 loops
As it happens, one of my plans for future versions is to let you load SOME of the water onto the rover. It was just a bit too much work with too little benefit for the current content. Glad you enjoyed it so far though.
It said I completed the demo in 1 loop, in 22 minutes. I can't click 'loop' only 'restart' (actually neither option works). I never opened the 10 minute door though; from the description I assumed I had to go out and get other supplies before I "restarted the power" and that it was the slower option.
A couple people have reported the buttons on "game complete" screen not working, so I'll definitely be looking at those at some point. The 10 minute door is mostly there to teach a lesson that you shouldn't just blindly try to do every action, but I'll likely make it a handy shortcut later in the story.
Finally finished the demo in two hours. On the last loop I hurried to pull out the power coupler from the food synthesiser, although the rover was not completely repaired, and only by a miracle the supplies were enough to get to the next base. It is inconvenient that the protein bars are at the end of the list. I would also like a "take max food/water" button.It will be interesting to play the full version.
I do plan to add buttons for "repeat this action for as long as you can", which would at least simplify the collection of food and water. Glad you enjoyed it.
Wonder how far you can make it in the rover without needing to put on the emergency suit - eva to artifact with no oxygen suit?), even without smuggled small water bottles
Possibly an idea to decrease oxygen storage when no longer in the building
Patiently awaiting future development and to absolutely gut any sort of intended balancing
Oh, and you can't start a new loop (maybe either button) when you reach the second base, but it's end of content anyway for now
Haha, can't say I've tried to find out, though I do have a note for v0.2 to rebalance Air. The specifics of how I do that will likely depend on what direction the future content goes in.
Always good to have someone trying to break the balance - helps make it better in the long run!
Huh. Wonder how I broke that. I'll leave a note for v0.2, but likely won't rush out a fix before then. As you say, it's the end of content and I don't think there's enough there for people to want to replay it that much yet.
I've confirmed it works on the latest version and I'm able to proceed. You might've been on the previous version, which definitely had some bugs. You did comment shortly after I uploaded the new one.
The text size is super small on my computer. This makes it hard to read.
I encountered a bug. When I restarted after getting the artifact it said that I would go straight to getting water. I tried getting water, but the action did not work. It queued it up, but would not run. The game was not paused. I had to die and restart so I could do anything.
This bug is repeated on restart. The Take Small Water Bottle button doesn't do anything. I do Open Cryopod, but it does not disappear. Open cryopod turns to black instead of disappearing. Take water appears underneath it. I do open pod again, and it disappears this time. Then I try to do take water, and it does not work.
I do need to properly look into auto text size scaling on high resolutions in Unity. It's not something I have much experience with.
Pretty sure both the other issues you had were caused by a v0.1.1 bug which I've fixed in v0.1.2. If you still run into it, let me know and I'll take a nother look.
I finished the first loop successfully. unlocked looping. and died. next run I open cryopod, explore facility. then get an option to take water botte, or explore facility again. thirst never starts. water is never gained. next run explore never appears. I die of hunger every run now. some sort of bug happened.
I did a hard restart to try again with the new version and decided to see what happens if you let your self go thirsty and it's kind of cool you really make that item at the other rover the real start of looping
Start new loop button doesn't work also managed to accidently take an extra small water bottle by only taking one of the initial 3 at the start then trying to grab one more just as I was about to finish the leaving the facility to have a full thing of water just as I was leaving the facility then was surprised to have access to the 3rd bottle still
Ahh yeah. I think when I was marking actions to be locked when you leave in the rover, I assumed you'd have to drink all 3 bottles by the time you left, but on later loops that's definitely not true... I've added a bug ticket to be fixed in v0.2.
IMO this game is off to a better start than the one it's inspired by with how you allow some obvious steps to outright be skipped the second time around and the changes in dialog
Thank you so much! I'm definitely hoping to push it more that direction as you get further through the story to prevent the early stages becoming just a repetative set of text messages which all blur past in seconds.
Oddly high CPU utilization, but otherwise I very much enjoy the foundation you have here! I only hope that when you make the full version that you will allow those of us here on Itch to buy it too!
Huh, I noticed an issue towards the end of the video where it wouldn't allow you to start the Extract Water action, but would allow you to add it to the end of the queue. That's only supposed to happen if you've queued enough of that action to hit its max completions AND have that action at the start of your queue already. But you didn't have any Extract Water at the start of your queue... I'll have to go back over the video to figure out what exactly caused that bug.
think it was just highlighting the last clicked option - can't exactly tell if they tried clicking it and it wouldn't let them, or if it was just the colour
Other things get greyed too (sometimes) until you click on something else but even if it was greyed it didn't block any intended use cases
It seems there's some issues with actions not getting locked (I was able to bust in the office door after hacking it, and I was able to keep synthesizing food after pulling the power coupler... and even after blasting off (I could even pull more water pouches, I guess I took the entire crate with me!)
I'd also say it might be worth saying earlier that death is not available for progression until later, given that you explicitly state you're inspired by a game that revolves around that :P
Hmm, odd. A couple of other people have noticed one action that doesn't get locked, so I think you must've run into a different bug which stopped any action from locking (except through hitting max completions, as that's a different system). No clue what could cause it, as I've not run into it in the released version myself, but I'll keep an eye out during future testing.
Simple game, simple mechanics, but very engaging. Keeps you just on the edge enough to want to keep pushing and see what's next. Would love to see more.
Solid prologue, leaves me wanting more! I don't know what the plans are for the later chapters, but I hope they address in fiction the meta-game of juggling the different consumables in order to avoid death by quantity caps. (I, playing the game, know not to do a certain thing early on for arbitrary game mechanic reasons that I, if really in the scenario, would ignore/bypass. That could be strong tutorializing if it ties to the reality bending narrative, but would be weird and gamey if not.)
Anyway, I dug it! Took a little over an hour, and that was because I was super thorough about having redundancies even where it ended up not mattering and cost me an extra cycle.
Really glad you enjoyed it! I do hope/plan to tie the game mechanics into the story as much as I can, though it's hard to say how succesful I'll be just yet.
First playthrough was actually really fun and I'd happily see more - although the fact that your water supply would be limited should've been made more apparent sooner (in that you can't fix it), or the option to siphon a pouch into a bottle for storage
Initially didn't like the rebirth and replaying the same starting segment (although did get curious about powerlevelling the destruction trait)
Worth noting the exploration trait is far lower on the second run, and it's unclear exactly what the blue bars and their length mean aside from you progress quicker
As others have said, the skip derelict rover check doesn't disappear when you visit it
The 'Destroy main door' check should be shown to you to know it's an option even if you turn power on before examining the door (First run)
Inventory/tasks could be a predetermined order (organising) rather than as you discover them, as well as ideally renewable sources of materials should be prioritised in consumption over finite ones (Water pouch being drunk before small water bottle -suspect it's just an order problem but it's a pain in the arse for the rover trip)
Would appreciate mention of any other cryopods in either initial exploration or a second check over when your life isn't hanging in the balance, to ensure you aren't damning anyone else you're leaving behind (or hey maybe you already have some other plans for that already)
Being able to harvest a resource when full to top off your metres would be good (otherwise cancelling when a full inventory is still fine- like an additional prompt to harvest despite full although I acknowledge this could be exploited regarding levels)
And a prompt that "Doing this will disable other actions" would be good too, even if you want mistakes and death to be a core gameplay element (by the way- two fullscreen buttons on the browser version)
Ultimately, definitely want to see more development and anticipating where this could go, certainly wouldn't mind being a guinea pig, keep up the good work, hope to see it on the front page of Itch in time
Thank you so much for the kind words and detailed response! I definitely agree that having a better indication of limited vs unlimited actions would be useful, though I'm unsure how I'd do that without making the action buttons larger to fit a done/max counter... An icon or different colour would work, but people still have to learn what it means in the first place. I'll throw a note on the list to think about for if/when I work on a content update.
I had intended to make tooltips for the skills, which would've broken down your current multipliers, but ran out of time (for my self-imposed deadline). I may be able to fit them into the bugfix patch I'll do in the next few days. That combined with the post-loop breakdown screen should clear things up.
Added note to tweak the 'Force Ground Floor Door' action in the bugfix. It was only actually hidden initially due to a technical limitation which I then fixed for the Admin Door.
I have a few plans for the Action and Inventory panels, but they'll all likely have to wait for the content update. Currently items are consumed in order of how much they restore, which honestly is just a holdover from Increlution, but Terraformental has increasingly become a slightly different style of game, so you may be right that it should change... Yeah, I'll try to fit this into the bugfix.
It can be difficult to decide how much to fit into a single log message, as I didn't want to have a single message scrolling off the screen, or generally put people off reading them. But you do raise a good point that I could add extra 'Explore more carefully' actions once you have access to all the unlimited resources and are stabilised.
As you say, harvesting when full would be very exploitable for farming XP. The closest I'd consider is if your inventory is full, but you're missing enough of the resource that you could instantly consume it, then maaaaybe? But I'd want to build up more of the game, so I have a better idea of what impact that might have on balance before I made that kind of change.
I can definitely add a 'disable other actions' warning of some kind on some actions, but it'd likely be in the content update.
Thanks for the offer - I'll be sure to keep you in mind if I get around to doing beta tests. Though if I'm honest, I doubt I'll get it to the front page (as nice as that would be) xD
Want to point out that there is exploit for some of XP in current version coming from the fact that attempting to start harvesting action for 5/5 items still advances time by small amount. So with enough amount of clicking it eventually reaches the point when item is being consumed and harvesting starts.
Only just noticed this.. creative feature, got pointed out (yes I knew of it) If you are going to get rid of it i'd suggest again to consider a collecting whilst full mechanic
It felt annoying enough to do that people wouldn't try to farm it (not casually at least) but it was also a really really useful tool if you were like 0.02 units away from being able to harvest and consume another resource without some other action to queue (used it a fair bit, to top up water as much as possible before setting out- and with the collection times being so fast anyway it was not worthwhile to farm xp from it)
When there's no leaderboard and if it breaks anything it would only be breaking for themselves, I think it's definitely something that could be.. accidentally overlooked, if there won't be a different mechanic to fill the hole
Alternate fixes would probably be too complex to be worth the dev time for now Thought I should say something before it gets patched and makes it all *even* harder without purpose
That is a fair observation... I'd certainly be happy to allow completing a pickup action to ~99% even when you're full. But I feel allowing actually picking items up when you're full would cause people to accidentally pick things up without realising they're full.
I suppose if it was REALLY wanted then I'd consider adding a button which lets you consume an item early, so long as you have space for at least 90% of it or something? Maybe have a toggle option to automatically do it when you're trying to pick up another of that item? I'll add it to the 'maybe' list for v0.2, but it may be up being pushed back to a later version depending how long things take. I'm going to try and stick to a similar schedule of working on major updates for ~2 weeks then release it, rather than end up feature creeping.
I had planned to do groupings on the inventory in V0.2.0, but doing the same to actions would make sense so long as I can make decent "new actions available" indicators. It's already hard to tell sometimes.
You can hl new actions just with flag and hover to clear it. Like factorio new recipes.. For me it's far more comfortable than any animations and easily to do.
Yeah, that'd be my go-to. My only concern is when new actions are added to the bottom of the list, but you're scrolled to the top... I'll play around with some UIs when I get there and see what works.
May be add new actions counter? I thought it's simplest solution. May be isn't so elegant, but useful. (Especially in games where old actions don't disappear but still moved to archive part)
Even just keeping the highlight until it's been moused over - but it doesn't seem like a particular issue when mistakes and looking around how to do things better is part of the game anyway
This is very well put together, and you did a great job of making a puzzle out of the timing. I'd love to see more of it. I think the only thing I'd really like to see in terms of quality of life is some kind of post-loop breakdown so I can know exactly how my skills translated into the permanent upgrades. Aside from that, yeah, this was a lot of fun, and I look forward to updates.
I did have plans for a post-loop breakdown, but ended up pushing it back to v0.2.0. Other than a bugfix update in the next few days, I plan to take a break by working on a different game for a short time before I decede whether or not to start on a content update for this. Really glad you enjoyed it though.
Neat game! Seems pretty interesting so far ( I got back to the derelict ship for the second life), but you probably shouldn't have the option to skip the derelict ship still available once you arrive at it.
Also, it's pretty easy to soft-lock yourself in the first run by removing the food coupler before you finish fixing the ship, at which point you have to start over from the beginning because you won't have the food to get to the ship.
Overall, a fun game though! I'll be excited to see it become a full game, if you continue working on it.
Thanks for finding that bug with skipping the derelict - the requirements for when the actions do/don't appear get pretty tangled at times, so it's easy to miss edge cases like that. I've added it to a list for a bugfix update that I'll aim to do in the next few days.
Unsure if I'll change the food coupler though. I do want it to be entirely possible for people to lose their first run if they're not paying attention, but the food coupler may be an overly punishing one... I'll have to think on it.
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I absolutely love the idea of this! I haven't gotten a chance to see all of it yet, as the glitch I see mentioned below happened to me and I could harvest resources all throughout the rover journey. I'll include a screenshot of the victory in case it helps. I'd like to see this idea expanded, and believe that with some polishing this could be better than Increlution. Keep it up!
(As you can see, I still have access to "Take Water Pouch", and "Synthesise Food", even though I took the power cell and left the start. I'll replay and attempt to figure out what triggered the glitch...)
Edit: Naturally dying seems to fix the problem for the next loops if it occurs.
I'm starting to wonder if this might be a browser-dependant issue or something... I might have to add in some debug logging at some point to help track down the issue.
Anyways, glad you enjoyed it. I really appreciate the screenshot and the offer to replay to help track it down!
it doesn't seem like you're supposed to be able to grab more food and water once you're piloting (since you "stockpile"), but with the amount of time it takes to get through the piloting section it's nearly impossible not to run out of water at the very least
very fun otherwise though! my first time playing a game of this genre, it was enjoyable
You're right that you're not supposed to be able to get more food or water after leaving the facility. It is difficult to survive - definitely not impossible, but judging by the number of people commenting on it, I probably will tweak it slightly at some point.
Glad you enjoyed it!
I enjoy
just did a fresh run through the game and the start new loop and restart from the beginning buttons still don't work hopefully I'll remember to come check on this game again in a week or two it's got serious potential
between two weeks and a month until more content, or at least more content will be in development (as far as we've been told)
I still feel thirsty
10/10 would recommend
Cool take on the loop/task based subgenre of idle games. Some feedback points:
Aside from the UI size none of these were that detrimental to the preview demo but would be nice to see those polished out in a final version. I enjoyed the space theming and plot of strange artifacts causing shenanigans. On top of that the story beats are well written. Keep it up!
Glad you enjoyed the story and ideas!
There's two fullscreen buttons, the blue unity one, and a fairly transparent itch one I think - clicking the unity one should make it proper fullscreen, although it doesn't change much
Great game!
I played it again:
The first time I played I encountered a bug without knowing it. Most of the actions didn't remove themselves when they should.(I scavenged the food synthesizer but could still scavenge for food, I hacked the doors, but could still destroy them, I left on the rover, but could still gather food and water...)
enjoyed it one loop used
Not bad at all. Water still seems to be the limiting factor (wonder why you can't just haul the entire crate onto the rover, weight constraints?), beat it in 2 loops
As it happens, one of my plans for future versions is to let you load SOME of the water onto the rover. It was just a bit too much work with too little benefit for the current content. Glad you enjoyed it so far though.
Yeah, I stacked both types of water and barely made it till the end
VERY cool really hope you continue this
It said I completed the demo in 1 loop, in 22 minutes. I can't click 'loop' only 'restart' (actually neither option works). I never opened the 10 minute door though; from the description I assumed I had to go out and get other supplies before I "restarted the power" and that it was the slower option.
A couple people have reported the buttons on "game complete" screen not working, so I'll definitely be looking at those at some point. The 10 minute door is mostly there to teach a lesson that you shouldn't just blindly try to do every action, but I'll likely make it a handy shortcut later in the story.
Finally finished the demo in two hours. On the last loop I hurried to pull out the power coupler from the food synthesiser, although the rover was not completely repaired, and only by a miracle the supplies were enough to get to the next base. It is inconvenient that the protein bars are at the end of the list. I would also like a "take max food/water" button. It will be interesting to play the full version.
I do plan to add buttons for "repeat this action for as long as you can", which would at least simplify the collection of food and water. Glad you enjoyed it.
Thanks.
Wonder how far you can make it in the rover without needing to put on the emergency suit - eva to artifact with no oxygen suit?), even without smuggled small water bottles
Possibly an idea to decrease oxygen storage when no longer in the building
Patiently awaiting future development and to absolutely gut any sort of intended balancing
Oh, and you can't start a new loop (maybe either button) when you reach the second base, but it's end of content anyway for now
Haha, can't say I've tried to find out, though I do have a note for v0.2 to rebalance Air. The specifics of how I do that will likely depend on what direction the future content goes in.
Always good to have someone trying to break the balance - helps make it better in the long run!
Huh. Wonder how I broke that. I'll leave a note for v0.2, but likely won't rush out a fix before then. As you say, it's the end of content and I don't think there's enough there for people to want to replay it that much yet.
(For the record it was an issue in 0.1.0, wasn't broken in the patch- there's crude workaround for the player rn)
I repaired the rover and nothing else is happening. I have it stuck with the auto pause so i can't pass time either
I've confirmed it works on the latest version and I'm able to proceed. You might've been on the previous version, which definitely had some bugs. You did comment shortly after I uploaded the new one.
The text size is super small on my computer. This makes it hard to read.
I encountered a bug. When I restarted after getting the artifact it said that I would go straight to getting water. I tried getting water, but the action did not work. It queued it up, but would not run. The game was not paused. I had to die and restart so I could do anything.
This bug is repeated on restart. The Take Small Water Bottle button doesn't do anything. I do Open Cryopod, but it does not disappear. Open cryopod turns to black instead of disappearing. Take water appears underneath it. I do open pod again, and it disappears this time. Then I try to do take water, and it does not work.
I am on Firefox, Windows 11 pro, if that matters.
I do need to properly look into auto text size scaling on high resolutions in Unity. It's not something I have much experience with.
Pretty sure both the other issues you had were caused by a v0.1.1 bug which I've fixed in v0.1.2. If you still run into it, let me know and I'll take a nother look.
I finished the first loop successfully. unlocked looping. and died. next run I open cryopod, explore facility. then get an option to take water botte, or explore facility again. thirst never starts. water is never gained. next run explore never appears. I die of hunger every run now. some sort of bug happened.
hard reset and it is working. beat it in two loops. it is nice.
Yep, v0.1.1 had a gamebreaking bug, so I got v0.1.2 sorted ASAP. Thanks for giving it another go, and glad you enjoyed!
the 'auto pause' because of death didn't work
I did a hard restart to try again with the new version and decided to see what happens if you let your self go thirsty and it's kind of cool you really make that item at the other rover the real start of looping
Start new loop button doesn't work
also managed to accidently take an extra small water bottle by only taking one of the initial 3 at the start then trying to grab one more just as I was about to finish the leaving the facility to have a full thing of water just as I was leaving the facility then was surprised to have access to the 3rd bottle still
Ahh yeah. I think when I was marking actions to be locked when you leave in the rover, I assumed you'd have to drink all 3 bottles by the time you left, but on later loops that's definitely not true... I've added a bug ticket to be fixed in v0.2.
Yeah Game makers can get cut real bad on edge cases *snickers*
IMO this game is off to a better start than the one it's inspired by with how you allow some obvious steps to outright be skipped the second time around and the changes in dialog
Thank you so much! I'm definitely hoping to push it more that direction as you get further through the story to prevent the early stages becoming just a repetative set of text messages which all blur past in seconds.
Also bypass option is still there after getting to the derelict rover the second time
Already mentioned by others (and fixed in v0.1.1), but thanks for letting me know!
BTW you might want to thank SaltManagement42 it was his mention of your game on reddit that lead me to discover it
Reddit Incremental games
Typo in the second time you go to the rover 'crate in the read compartment' I presume that should be 'rear'
Good catch, and just in time before I uploaded v0.1.1! Fixed.
Oddly high CPU utilization, but otherwise I very much enjoy the foundation you have here! I only hope that when you make the full version that you will allow those of us here on Itch to buy it too!
Huh, I've not noticed any CPU spikes, but it could be only under certain conditions. I'll keep an eye on it during future testing.
Glad you enjoyed it! And yes, I'd most likely have any future paid version on Itch even it does end up on Steam too.
Great potential !
Huh, I noticed an issue towards the end of the video where it wouldn't allow you to start the Extract Water action, but would allow you to add it to the end of the queue. That's only supposed to happen if you've queued enough of that action to hit its max completions AND have that action at the start of your queue already. But you didn't have any Extract Water at the start of your queue... I'll have to go back over the video to figure out what exactly caused that bug.
think it was just highlighting the last clicked option - can't exactly tell if they tried clicking it and it wouldn't let them, or if it was just the colour
Other things get greyed too (sometimes) until you click on something else but even if it was greyed it didn't block any intended use cases
It seems there's some issues with actions not getting locked (I was able to bust in the office door after hacking it, and I was able to keep synthesizing food after pulling the power coupler... and even after blasting off (I could even pull more water pouches, I guess I took the entire crate with me!)
I'd also say it might be worth saying earlier that death is not available for progression until later, given that you explicitly state you're inspired by a game that revolves around that :P
Hmm, odd. A couple of other people have noticed one action that doesn't get locked, so I think you must've run into a different bug which stopped any action from locking (except through hitting max completions, as that's a different system). No clue what could cause it, as I've not run into it in the released version myself, but I'll keep an eye out during future testing.
Simple game, simple mechanics, but very engaging. Keeps you just on the edge enough to want to keep pushing and see what's next. Would love to see more.
Solid prologue, leaves me wanting more! I don't know what the plans are for the later chapters, but I hope they address in fiction the meta-game of juggling the different consumables in order to avoid death by quantity caps. (I, playing the game, know not to do a certain thing early on for arbitrary game mechanic reasons that I, if really in the scenario, would ignore/bypass. That could be strong tutorializing if it ties to the reality bending narrative, but would be weird and gamey if not.)
Anyway, I dug it! Took a little over an hour, and that was because I was super thorough about having redundancies even where it ended up not mattering and cost me an extra cycle.
Really glad you enjoyed it! I do hope/plan to tie the game mechanics into the story as much as I can, though it's hard to say how succesful I'll be just yet.
This is going to be a long post.
First playthrough was actually really fun and I'd happily see more - although the fact that your water supply would be limited should've been made more apparent sooner (in that you can't fix it), or the option to siphon a pouch into a bottle for storage
Initially didn't like the rebirth and replaying the same starting segment (although did get curious about powerlevelling the destruction trait)
Worth noting the exploration trait is far lower on the second run, and it's unclear exactly what the blue bars and their length mean aside from you progress quicker
As others have said, the skip derelict rover check doesn't disappear when you visit it
The 'Destroy main door' check should be shown to you to know it's an option even if you turn power on before examining the door (First run)
Inventory/tasks could be a predetermined order (organising) rather than as you discover them, as well as ideally renewable sources of materials should be prioritised in consumption over finite ones (Water pouch being drunk before small water bottle -suspect it's just an order problem but it's a pain in the arse for the rover trip)
Would appreciate mention of any other cryopods in either initial exploration or a second check over when your life isn't hanging in the balance, to ensure you aren't damning anyone else you're leaving behind (or hey maybe you already have some other plans for that already)
Being able to harvest a resource when full to top off your metres would be good (otherwise cancelling when a full inventory is still fine- like an additional prompt to harvest despite full although I acknowledge this could be exploited regarding levels)
And a prompt that "Doing this will disable other actions" would be good too, even if you want mistakes and death to be a core gameplay element (by the way- two fullscreen buttons on the browser version)
Ultimately, definitely want to see more development and anticipating where this could go, certainly wouldn't mind being a guinea pig, keep up the good work, hope to see it on the front page of Itch in time
Thank you so much for the kind words and detailed response! I definitely agree that having a better indication of limited vs unlimited actions would be useful, though I'm unsure how I'd do that without making the action buttons larger to fit a done/max counter... An icon or different colour would work, but people still have to learn what it means in the first place. I'll throw a note on the list to think about for if/when I work on a content update.
I had intended to make tooltips for the skills, which would've broken down your current multipliers, but ran out of time (for my self-imposed deadline). I may be able to fit them into the bugfix patch I'll do in the next few days. That combined with the post-loop breakdown screen should clear things up.
Added note to tweak the 'Force Ground Floor Door' action in the bugfix. It was only actually hidden initially due to a technical limitation which I then fixed for the Admin Door.
I have a few plans for the Action and Inventory panels, but they'll all likely have to wait for the content update. Currently items are consumed in order of how much they restore, which honestly is just a holdover from Increlution, but Terraformental has increasingly become a slightly different style of game, so you may be right that it should change... Yeah, I'll try to fit this into the bugfix.
It can be difficult to decide how much to fit into a single log message, as I didn't want to have a single message scrolling off the screen, or generally put people off reading them. But you do raise a good point that I could add extra 'Explore more carefully' actions once you have access to all the unlimited resources and are stabilised.
As you say, harvesting when full would be very exploitable for farming XP. The closest I'd consider is if your inventory is full, but you're missing enough of the resource that you could instantly consume it, then maaaaybe? But I'd want to build up more of the game, so I have a better idea of what impact that might have on balance before I made that kind of change.
I can definitely add a 'disable other actions' warning of some kind on some actions, but it'd likely be in the content update.
Thanks for the offer - I'll be sure to keep you in mind if I get around to doing beta tests. Though if I'm honest, I doubt I'll get it to the front page (as nice as that would be) xD
If you have the conviction and dedication, it could go far, *Will* go far - all it takes is time and thought, there's no maybe
You'll do just fine
Great demo :)
Want to point out that there is exploit for some of XP in current version coming from the fact that attempting to start harvesting action for 5/5 items still advances time by small amount. So with enough amount of clicking it eventually reaches the point when item is being consumed and harvesting starts.
Ooo, very nice catch. Thanks, I'll add a ticket to fix that in v0.2!
Only just noticed this.. creative feature, got pointed out (yes I knew of it)
If you are going to get rid of it i'd suggest again to consider a collecting whilst full mechanic
It felt annoying enough to do that people wouldn't try to farm it (not casually at least) but it was also a really really useful tool if you were like 0.02 units away from being able to harvest and consume another resource without some other action to queue (used it a fair bit, to top up water as much as possible before setting out- and with the collection times being so fast anyway it was not worthwhile to farm xp from it)
When there's no leaderboard and if it breaks anything it would only be breaking for themselves, I think it's definitely something that could be.. accidentally overlooked, if there won't be a different mechanic to fill the hole
Alternate fixes would probably be too complex to be worth the dev time for now
Thought I should say something before it gets patched and makes it all *even* harder without purpose
That is a fair observation... I'd certainly be happy to allow completing a pickup action to ~99% even when you're full. But I feel allowing actually picking items up when you're full would cause people to accidentally pick things up without realising they're full.
I suppose if it was REALLY wanted then I'd consider adding a button which lets you consume an item early, so long as you have space for at least 90% of it or something? Maybe have a toggle option to automatically do it when you're trying to pick up another of that item? I'll add it to the 'maybe' list for v0.2, but it may be up being pushed back to a later version depending how long things take. I'm going to try and stick to a similar schedule of working on major updates for ~2 weeks then release it, rather than end up feature creeping.
This is really good! It was nice to try and figure out how to manage the resources to do everything on time.
I managed to reach the end of the demo after 3 loops. Thank you, and I hope you’ll continue developing this!
Absolutely love it!
Be cool if actions been sorted by group like food/water/air refill, deconstruction, movement...
Thanks!
I had planned to do groupings on the inventory in V0.2.0, but doing the same to actions would make sense so long as I can make decent "new actions available" indicators. It's already hard to tell sometimes.
You can hl new actions just with flag and hover to clear it. Like factorio new recipes.. For me it's far more comfortable than any animations and easily to do.
Yeah, that'd be my go-to. My only concern is when new actions are added to the bottom of the list, but you're scrolled to the top... I'll play around with some UIs when I get there and see what works.
May be add new actions counter? I thought it's simplest solution. May be isn't so elegant, but useful. (Especially in games where old actions don't disappear but still moved to archive part)
Oooh, yes. That works. Just a little indicator on the Actions title for 'X new' so long as there are any. Thanks!
Even just keeping the highlight until it's been moused over - but it doesn't seem like a particular issue when mistakes and looking around how to do things better is part of the game anyway
This is very well put together, and you did a great job of making a puzzle out of the timing. I'd love to see more of it. I think the only thing I'd really like to see in terms of quality of life is some kind of post-loop breakdown so I can know exactly how my skills translated into the permanent upgrades. Aside from that, yeah, this was a lot of fun, and I look forward to updates.
Thank you for the kind words!
I did have plans for a post-loop breakdown, but ended up pushing it back to v0.2.0. Other than a bugfix update in the next few days, I plan to take a break by working on a different game for a short time before I decede whether or not to start on a content update for this. Really glad you enjoyed it though.
Neat game! Seems pretty interesting so far ( I got back to the derelict ship for the second life), but you probably shouldn't have the option to skip the derelict ship still available once you arrive at it.
Also, it's pretty easy to soft-lock yourself in the first run by removing the food coupler before you finish fixing the ship, at which point you have to start over from the beginning because you won't have the food to get to the ship.
Overall, a fun game though! I'll be excited to see it become a full game, if you continue working on it.
Thanks for finding that bug with skipping the derelict - the requirements for when the actions do/don't appear get pretty tangled at times, so it's easy to miss edge cases like that. I've added it to a list for a bugfix update that I'll aim to do in the next few days.
Unsure if I'll change the food coupler though. I do want it to be entirely possible for people to lose their first run if they're not paying attention, but the food coupler may be an overly punishing one... I'll have to think on it.
Thanks for your comment!