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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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!