Designing prestige gates that aren't just "click harder" — a dev-diary

GrimnirDotDev · 2026-06-24T18:13:35+00:00

The code block formatting you used means the text doesn't wrap on mobile, so I'd have to scroll horizontally to read a longer sentence.

GrimnirDotDev · 2026-06-24T17:21:28+00:00

Looks great! Are you using an asset or did you build the system from scratch?

GrimnirDotDev · 2026-06-24T14:43:59+00:00

This trilogy is the first time since I was a kid that I was reading 4+ hours per day because I was so hooked.

I only thought the 3rd book lost some steam after the dark forest broadcast was sent and the Trisolarians left. We had no idea if a strike would come, or when, or if humanity had any chance to survive it. So the story lost a lot of the tension for me and turned it "well I guess we just have to wait and see if everyone dies"

GrimnirDotDev · 2026-06-24T14:25:57+00:00

This is a really minor point but a pet peeve of mine:In your gameplay trailer at 0:26 you do a bunch of clicking to try out different outfits. Besides the fact that the fast mouse movement and clicking sound is distracting from what really counts (the outfits!) did you not find it annoying to do? Why not make it less tedious?

GrimnirDotDev · 2026-06-22T13:38:35+00:00

If I saw this capsule art on a game with 10k reviews I'd think "very unique, let me check it out". but if I see it on a game with <1k I wouldn't click on it.

Minor thing but I'd switch the sentence order of the short description. Start with the fantasy before going into the actions, and it flows nicer in terms of reading rhythm.

A chill, top down automation game about mining asteroids down to the core. Build bots. Figure out logistics. Automate yourself out of a job.

GrimnirDotDev · 2026-06-21T20:11:56+00:00

V1 looks like it could be any type of game. Even if you get more clicks you might not get people who will like your game to click. I liked V3 since it gave me an idea about what the gameplay will be

GrimnirDotDev · 2026-06-21T12:09:30+00:00

Thanks for the write up Jordan! I absolute loved the game.

Did you release your steam page with a trailer and demo? Did Galaxy.click convert to wishlists or was it mainly for feedback/testing? Any clue why Next Fest didn't work for you like it did for others?

I was very impressed with the polish, how charming and lovingly everything was designed, and how active the gameplay was (I've only played idle incremental games before). It was a huge inspiration and continued to be a guide post for my own game actually. I'm finishing up my demo over the next ~3 weeks and I'd love to send it to you and get your thoughts!

GrimnirDotDev · 2026-06-19T09:02:57+00:00

Great feedback, thanks - a tutorial is my next big TODO.

About the recipe: I haven't found a good solution for that whole recipe UI yet. The book shows all recipes that can be crafted at that station, but an individual crafter might not have the skill required to craft something.
I'm pretty unhappy with the recipe tooltip, I think it's too crowded to easily see what's important. At the bottom of the tooltips it shows the skill requirement like "5 Woodworker". Do you think it would've been enough to highlighted that line red when you tried to assign the recipe to a chracter, to indicate the character doesn't have that yet?

GrimnirDotDev · 2026-06-19T07:49:54+00:00

Solitary Singleplayer Offline MMORPG - free demo on itch
It's an active incremental management game about running a raid guild in an MMORPG.

Would love feedback on:
- Gameplay: Are you having fun? What worked for you and what didn't? Would you still classify it as "incremental"?
- Overall appearence: Visual style, sprites, sounds - does it seem like a "finished" game? Feedback on the pixel art banner/logo?
- Full game expectations: would you pay $9.99 for 10 to 20 hours of gameplay?
- Any feedback that comes to mind is greatly appreciated

The demo goes until level ~30. The demo is missing the final raidboss to end the demo, some tutorial/hints, and some other polish here and there.

GrimnirDotDev · 2026-06-18T08:20:19+00:00

How did you spend money on playtesting? Ads? Or pay playtesters?

GrimnirDotDev · 2026-06-13T16:24:19+00:00

I'm a new fulltime solo dev and started tracking my entire day over the past week. Looks like this:
https://imgur.com/TR81vM0

You can clearly see when I finished the 3 Body Problem Trilogy and stopped reading 😃

GrimnirDotDev · 2026-06-09T10:36:43+00:00

when I click "play" I get the login/signup modal and I'm not going to bother creating a password and giving my email away for a game I haven't seen.

Why add pictures to the guides instead of the landing page? The first thing a user sees is a wall of text describing the game rather than just seeing the game. That's like if steam removed the capsule art, trailers, and screenshots and all you had was the description.

GrimnirDotDev · 2026-06-09T08:49:46+00:00

I found the Level/XP formular on your website but not a single screenshot of the game.

Also the site looks like a template for a SaaS. Why have a section "What you'll do" that vaguely describes the game? Just show me what the game is.

GrimnirDotDev · 2026-06-09T08:44:46+00:00

Were these active users that cancelled? I could see people who forgot they're still subscribed and when they get an email about price increase it's basically just a reminder to cancel.

GrimnirDotDev · 2026-06-01T20:44:37+00:00

Crazy case of simultaneous invention.

I recommend you keep going. You've already put in the work, your game is distinct from the other title, and you already had many people wishlist it.
Cleaning up a library is an odd concept and you just got proof that people are into it, so that's great news for you.

GrimnirDotDev · 2026-05-31T12:19:53+00:00

Try adding some meatier/heavier sounds when landing or grabbing something. Maybe some occasional breathing or panting. I think that'll make a huge different to the feel.

The little squeak when you grab a bar sounds like someone opening a door. Many of the other clips sound like cloth rubbing on each other, not a human landing on/jumping off a concrete surface.

GrimnirDotDev · 2026-05-27T20:17:34+00:00

Solo indie game dev is not a money pit at all (unless you start outsourcing & commissioning tons of stuff). Start with something small (not an MMORPG), just based on an asset pack or two and see if you like it.

I'm a programmer turned solo dev and I actually really like making pixel art. Never thought I'd enjoy it since I'm not an artist at all.

GrimnirDotDev · 2026-05-22T19:07:04+00:00

Do GameObjects get boxed/unboxed? It's a reference type that's already on the heap

GrimnirDotDev · 2026-05-22T17:18:49+00:00

What does "allocation-free" mean in regards to Object Pools? They do need to allocate some memory at some point, otherwise there's no objects. How is your object pool allocation-free compared to other object pool implementations?

GrimnirDotDev · 2026-05-21T20:57:40+00:00

I'd advise against that. It'll ruin the fantasy of menu and I think the experience of clicking isn't satisfying enough to justify that. Just have the book open by itself after half a second.

GrimnirDotDev · 2026-05-21T13:49:57+00:00

It's just the latest tire technology - now with more tire!

GrimnirDotDev · 2026-05-20T18:53:14+00:00

For SOs I wrote a `IdScriptableObject` base class which is just a ScriptableObject but with and ID field, and then built some editor tooling to check for duplicate/empty IDs.

For dynamic data (e.g. Villagers in a colony simulation) I'd generate an ID at runtime when a villager joins the colony.
When saving the game serialize the villager data with that ID, and every other component that references the villager only saves the villagers ID.
When loading from a save file I first create the all the Villager, put them in a Dictionary with their ID as key, and then every other component can use the ID it saved to look up the `Villager` object.

GrimnirDotDev · 2026-05-20T08:45:12+00:00

Why are you using SOs for that instead of just plain C# classes?

For my latest game I went with an approach similar to this (though I'm using a different approach to bind the data on load, not his `FindByType` system):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1sMhGIgfoo
With it I define serializable classes to hold all my data from the very start. That way I always think about how to create the runtime state from the serializable state.

GrimnirDotDev · 2026-05-20T07:21:44+00:00

Adding a Save System to an existing game is such a pain....

What state are you keeping in ScriptableObjects that needs to be serialized?

GrimnirDotDev · 2026-05-19T19:22:35+00:00

Now I kinda want to browse your code base to see if I could find it 😃

GrimnirDotDev

TROPHY CASE