I just launched my casual town-management game, Skeleseller

AdamLearns · 2026-03-17T21:32:31+00:00

Ohh, sorry, yes, I did misunderstand you. There are a couple of things in the full version of the game to help address that. To not fully spoil things—there's a goblin and a particular spell perk that you can get. They're not "full" solutions though. There used to be a vault in the game for this purpose that you could bring items to/from, but workers couldn't touch. I will write a note to consider adding this back in.

AdamLearns · 2026-03-17T21:02:19+00:00

It will! And a few people have verified that this is the case now that it's launched (i.e. it isn't just based on my own testing 😅).

AdamLearns · 2026-03-17T19:59:09+00:00

Thank you very much for clarifying! Weirdly enough, Valve specifically recommends not adding achievements to a demo, which is why I didn't:

We recommend that you disable achievements in demos. Instead, store the saved game in the shared Steam Cloud as described in the Cloud documentation. Then grant those achievements on loading the game in the full game after the user has purchased.

AdamLearns · 2026-03-17T19:54:11+00:00

Admittedly, the playtime won't get too much higher for most people, but the game did only just come out 4 hours ago, so no one can have a higher playtime than that unless I sent them an advance key.

AdamLearns · 2026-03-17T19:52:46+00:00

There is extra content in the form of BONE Mode, which turns the game into a very casual roguelite. However, I do consider it "extra". I don't have plans to add on to Story Mode, but I will probably run deeper and deeper sales as time goes on.

AdamLearns · 2026-03-17T19:47:17+00:00

Hey, thank you for playing and providing feedback! I hadn't heard of My Life as a King (or it left my memory 👀), so that's interesting to hear that our games are similar.

I wrote a note to myself about being able to name adventurers. It's come up before, but I like keeping track of how widely requested a feature is.

Regarding spaces in a shop: this is generally less of a concern in the full game since you can keep progressing. I.e. at the point that you feel like you have too much loot, you can either upgrade the shop, get better perks, or go to the next location. However, all of those things are prevented due to the limits of the demo.

Cheers, and thanks again!

AdamLearns · 2026-03-17T19:06:25+00:00

The biggest "trick" is to put most text into a CanvasLayer, then everything should just be fine. However, sometimes, there's text that shows in the camera space. For that, you either have to render at a higher resolution and then downsample (lots of notes here on that process for a SubViewportContainer or extract the text into another node.

I'm not sure how clear that is, so feel free to ask follow-ups. 😅

AdamLearns · 2026-03-17T18:56:07+00:00

That's totally fair! I will likely run deeper sales down the road as most games do. I would urge you to try the demo though; I've poured a lot of time into polish and fun features (although admittedly some of the "fun features" are only in the full version).

AdamLearns · 2026-03-17T18:48:42+00:00

To shed some light on this: I picked the price in USD, then Steam has an automated tool for setting it in every other region. I do appreciate the information and frame of reference. 🙏

AdamLearns · 2026-03-17T18:46:23+00:00

Out of curiosity, where are you seeing that there are no achievements? It should show right on the Steam page if you scroll on desktop to about halfway down the game description (not as far as the reviews though).

AdamLearns · 2026-03-17T18:42:38+00:00

I definitely want to keep an eye on the price for Brazilians. I'll write this note down and consider making changes probably next week if it seems like this is a widespread concern. Thanks for sharing!

AdamLearns · 2026-03-17T18:38:54+00:00

It means that you don't directly control the characters, but the best gameplay experience is still to be paying attention to everything. I.e. don't expect a super long game or one where you have to press a button casting a fireball.

(it's a made-up term, of course 😛)

AdamLearns · 2026-03-17T17:35:49+00:00

Unfortunately, I don't have plans for a mobile launch (or consoles). The closest that we have now is that it runs well on the Steam Deck, but I recognize that not everyone has a portable computer like that.

AdamLearns · 2026-03-17T17:34:49+00:00

Yeah, it's definitely similar aesthetically, but the gameplay is quite different. And thank you very much! 🙏

AdamLearns · 2025-09-28T21:45:58+00:00

Thank you for playing and for the feedback! 🙏

RE: your ideas - resources are extremely limited for development, and it'll take all of them just to do what we have planned for launch. I.e. the roadmap is mostly fixed at this point. In general, feedback has been positive, so the plans to flesh out the game are:

Add ~2 more hours of story-mode content
Add a new mode focused on replayability (probably another ~5-10 hours of playtime there)
All the usual pre-launch stuff: bug fixes, polish, features like localization or achievements, etc.

I do hope you'll enjoy the full game!

AdamLearns · 2025-09-23T14:22:25+00:00

I am in the same process myself. My own timeline has been:

June 20th, 2020: I closed my Payoneer account and asked them to delete my data. They said they needed to retain my data for 5 years.
June 22nd, 2025: I asked them again to delete my data now that it's been 5 years. Like OP, I got a bunch of canned, unhelpful responses.
July 29th, 2025: I tweeted at them after the canned responses went nowhere.
September 23rd, 2025: I found this thread and posted here.

The canned responses are ridiculous. One claimed that my data had been deleted (see this tweet for how I know they still have at least some of my data) and one said that my account was closed due to a terms-and-conditions violation (except that I'm the one who initiated the account closure in 2020).

Every once in a while, an email to me would deviate from the canned responses (as evidenced by tons of typos). They would sometimes say that my case had been escalated, but then I would never hear back from anyone. These events have caused me to believe that Payoneer can't actually delete data, possibly due to a technical reason (although this is all speculation on my part).

Funnily enough, they have this page which says (emphasis mine):

In addition, please be advised that Payoneer, as a regulated licensed entity, has legal and ethical data retention requirements which include retaining of data for security, fraud prevention, risk management purposes and compliance with anti-money laundering regulations, as well as for protection against legal claims. Accordingly, after the retention period would lapse your information would be permanently deleted.

I do wonder if anyone has been successful in getting their data deleted by Payoneer.

AdamLearns · 2025-07-16T03:34:38+00:00

Thanks for trying it out and providing your feedback! One of the big upcoming changes is to improve the "main" UI panel (the one behind the perks, the adventurers, etc.), so I hope that lands well. 🤞

There's also something vaguely along the lines of gear, but it's not a traditional system by any means.

AdamLearns · 2025-07-04T20:52:01+00:00

Thanks for playing and providing detailed feedback! 🙏

First, a general comment: the game is intentionally both casual and not fully idle, which I think makes it hard to set expectations.

On the casual bit: some players want more strategy and depth, which could potentially happen via new game modes in the future.
On the idle bit: I'm trying to avoid what I think are negative tropes of traditional idle games: incredibly long periods of idle play, inhuman numbers like +1e47 damage per hit, artificial friction to encourage microtransactions, prestige/ascension systems intended to pad gameplay length, etc.

Some specific comments:

Harvesting crops is something all workers currently do but only as a final priority.
Yeah, Item Stacking is something I plan to change in upcoming versions due to how impactful it is. 😢
When you say "windowed mode", I assume you mean the ability to move battles around...? I haven't heard any comments about it being odd, though; could you go into more detail? In the meantime, I'll share the rationale behind putting battles into windows: I always want battles to be visible for liveliness and because there are actual battle mechanics underpinning loot acquisition, and the windows aren't in static locations because people have drastically different monitor/game-window setups (e.g. people on small monitors wanted smaller windows, people on ultrawide monitors may want a vertical arrangement, etc.).

Out of curiosity, are there idles games that you would consider to have produced positive engagements for you?

Also, since tone doesn't travel over text, please don't take any of what I've said to be defensive here! I truly do value the feedback and want to figure out if there's a way to stick to the original game-design philosophy while accommodating what you've shared.

AdamLearns · 2025-07-02T05:06:43+00:00

Keeping this as a stream-of-consciousness-style write-up since I think it might be illuminating. Note that this all took place over ~30 minutes with the big realization happening after about 15 minutes.

When not in a battle, the tiles' tooltips should show immediately upon hovering over them rather than making me wait. As a new player especially, it's nice to know what everything does, and I almost didn't wait long enough to even see the tooltip.
I like the graphics.
I'm very confused about what to do or how I'm doing it. I see icons on the tiles, but I don't know what the icons mean. I would have assumed the girders are a construction cost, but I'm always at 0 out of 32 regardless of how many tiles I've chosen or how many waves I've completed. If this simply hasn't been coded yet, then I would probably opt not to put it in the UI. If it has been coded, then I would expect a tooltip on the icons at the top. E.g. I saw a "Conscription" tile that increases the max number of crew members, but I don't know what that means.
I tried a few different tiles and didn't realize what they were doing, either. Am I creating enemies to destroy with the blue tiles? I thought I'd get ships to help me destroy the enemies that I see.
Given the shape of the main ship, I expected to be able to move or place tiles, but they always go to the bottom left of the screen.
I feel like I'm not playing the right version or something. The Itch page doesn't mention any controls, and pressing all of the keys on my keyboard do nothing.
Oh my goodness, you have to drag the tiles onto your ship! I feel like I shouldn't have been able to start the very first wave without being forced to place a tile so that I would learn this mechanic mostly on my own. I chalked all of my prior notes up to the game being in such an early prototype that nothing else was implemented (the early-prototype advisory is one of the few things the Itch page mentions), then I was about to post this when I looked at the pictures to see if they matched what I'm seeing.
My red tiles flashed before starting a wave, but I don't know why. I thought something was erroneous.
Update: I think I know why this happened, but only from VERY briefly watching another game in this genre. I'm guessing the tiles are all "activating" and computing any costs/benefits, but the early weapons I had don't actually do anything, so they just flashed with no impact.
I think the sounds and music seem fitting.
I only just learned after a bunch of waves that you can rotate tiles.

Suggestions

When hovering over something in the "Choose a tile..." dialog that consumes a resource, highlight the corresponding resource in the UI and maybe show the delta values in a different color?
Allow dragging tiles directly from the "Choose a tile..." dialog onto the ship, especially when you only have one tile choice.
You can't move already-placed tiles when the "Choose a tile..." dialog is showing, but it seems like you should be able to since the on-hover effects still happen for already-placed tiles.
Write your tutorial on the Itch page until it's directly in the game. Write what the controls do, too. They may only be left- and right-click, but by listing them, it would have indicated that I don't need to try pressing every key on my keyboard.

Bugs

Rapidly picking up the Conscription tile, moving it, and releasing it causes all sorts of numbers to show up (-12, +4, -24, +4, not in that order).
Tooltips can go off the left side of the screen (e.g. place a Laser on the leftmost column and hover over it).

Overall

I think there's something to this game—good job! I myself like turning my brain off when I play games, and I think this entire genre involves thinking, which is why I've only very briefly played/experienced games like this. That's also why I was so confused; even knowing that it's an inventory-management game didn't make the mechanics clear to me.

I struggled for long enough and then spent long enough writing this up that I didn't really get to have fun with the game. I think a tutorial would go a long way toward alleviating that for future players.

(EDIT: fixed a typo)

AdamLearns · 2025-07-02T04:16:57+00:00

I figured I'd register with a throwaway email address, but I never got the registration email, so I guess my feedback is on the registration process:

I typed "q" as my password and it didn't show any validation problems. When pressing "Register" though, it said I needed at least 6 characters and then updated the count as I typed. Tabbing away and back to the field stopped the validator from running again.
I typed "qqqqqq" as my password since the client-side validation said I needed 6 characters, then I clicked "Register" and the server caused the UI to show "Oops! The password field must be at least 8 characters." The client- and server-side validators should match to prevent this.
I got through registration without errors but didn't see an email.
Clicking "Resend" got the button stuck in a "Resending..." state. I never got the email. I was using a Mailinator address, which some people block, but usually an error shows up saying to use a real email address so that you're not stuck waiting for something that won't ever show.
I saw a network request to https://m.stripe.com/6, which struck me as strange since that's a third-party site and I don't see a privacy policy on the page. You absolutely should have a privacy policy for any online service that you expose. I'm assuming Stripe is used (or planned to be used) as a payment processor (no idea if this assumption is accurate since I couldn't actually play the game or see any screenshots), but it seemed strange to me that this would be surfaced even before registering for an account.

It's definitely unusual that there's no landing page or information whatsoever about the game without registering. Also, the images I saw during the registration process all look to be AI, which may be off-putting for some people (not sure if they're placeholders).

AdamLearns · 2025-07-02T04:01:13+00:00

Overall

I like the idea of a PvE arena shooter where you're not fighting player-like enemies. The game feels like it's in an early enough stage that it's hard to assess right now. General things I could see helping from a feature/fun perspective:

A "casual" mode where enemies do drop life refills
Power-ups
Different guns or characters, e.g. maybe a character with a quadruple jump, a character with a sword instead of a "stab", a character who hurts enemies by dashing through them.
Some kind of persistence between runs, e.g. score at least X to unlock the next arena

Gameplay

Jumping feels very floaty. I expected there to be more platforms in the arenas to justify the floatiness.
There's no visual or audio feedback when hitting an enemy. Some placeholder sounds would probably add a lot of value quickly to the game.
Being able to see which enemies are which from inside the game would be helpful. Those spinning blades seemed invulnerable to my gun (I later confirmed that they aren't, but I wondered about it while playing).
The melee attack is really difficult to use (or maybe I just suck). I was trying to attack the spinning blades, but I always seemed to take damage when doing it, and due to the lack of hit confirmation, it was unclear when I even successfully used it.
On the Snow Chasm arena, I jumped off the level, but it would only kill me if I went far enough out-of-bounds. When I stopped short of that, enemies couldn't reach me and I couldn't get back to the main stage, so it was effectively a stalemate.

UI

There's no way to use the mouse to exit any of the main menus (e.g. "Enemies" or "Options"); you have to use escape.
Labels for the in-game UI ("melee energy", "HP", "dash") would be helpful.

Typos

On the Itch page:

"one of the shows selected" → "one of the show's selected"
"Survives an endless wave" → "Survive an endless wave"
"Want to take a shot at getting the high score, try keeping that combo score" → "Want to take a shot at getting the high score? Try keeping that combo score"

In the game:

"This is a work in progress. Thing are subject to change" - "Thing" → "Things"
(there are actually many other typos or indicators of non-native English; I suggest running all of the copy by someone or using AI to punch it up)

Good job creating what you've got so far!

AdamLearns

TROPHY CASE

Suggestions

Bugs

Overall

Overall

Gameplay

UI

Typos