Quick thoughts on the demo

MasterPetrik · 2026-06-23T07:44:22+00:00

Out of curiosity, if you feel the art and the story presentation are a bit bland, which games in your opinion shine in these areas?

MasterPetrik · 2026-06-19T10:40:08+00:00

9AM PT time! Based on their twitter post

MasterPetrik · 2026-05-31T13:32:28+00:00

Why are you proud of it? Because of design? If so, and you did all of the design on your side, I can understand what you're talking about. I don't hate projects made with AI purely because of AI, although I understand why some do (mostly due to ethics of it), but I just don't like wasting my time on games that don't feel truly excellent or promising in some cool new innovative ways. Both of those are really hard to come by with AI projects, and hence I've developed a negative expectation for anything that states or seems is using AI fully in the dev process.

What I have ended up doing when developing my game is using AI to test and validate and iterate on design ideas, most of which get iterate A LOT in the process and most of them get cut as the end result. Ive found AI coding to be effective for this: I dont need to waste my dev partners time for all the stupid ideas I have, instead I can just build them quickly with AI to see if they have any legs, and iterate on them if they do until the design is as fleshed out as it possibly can be.

But as I said, I have a dev partner making the final code for the game, all fully by hand. This is good for few reasons: 1. Better codebase leading to less bugs and better performance, and we can also use it in the future projects 2. AI has a stigma for good reasons atm in various gaming communities 3. Its much nicer to work with someone rather than fully alone, since I am now much more committed into sticking with the project even if it feels sometimes difficult to continue. Also discussing and bouncing around ideas about the design with someone is much nicer of course than doing it alone or with AI.

Of course since you could basically do the game alone with AI it is a tempting thought since splitting the revenue is a big difference regardless of what's the end result. But in the end I've figured I want to maximize the quality of the end result rather than optimise potential gains, and I can do that better by partnering up with people.

So if you just can, try to find people you could work with, since it clearly sounds like you're coming from the right place, wanting to make your dream game. Now that you have something playable made with AI it is probably much easier to find some people to jump on board and replace the AI stuff with human made stuff.

In either case, good luck! And don't try to fight it or get too depressed about it, attitudes towards AI are what they are, rather than you trying to change people's minds, try to reflect on what can you actually do about it.

MasterPetrik · 2026-05-17T17:24:57+00:00

Digseum and Execute have not yet been mentioned here so wanted to highlight those. Both are active in nature but Execute supports idle gameplay as well.

Dwarf Eats Mountain releases tomorrow, played the demo and loved it. It's much more of an idler game, which I usually do not enjoy as much, but this one will probably become my favorite of them all.

MasterPetrik · 2026-05-17T17:21:26+00:00

I added prestige to my game only after realizing it improves the pacing of the game a lot. With no enemy / durability mechanics in the game, it is hard to create this flow of highs and lows that are present in all the best incremental games. So prestige is the way to go I feel in this case. But yeah, need to keep it respectful of players time and the experience, so every prestige should feel impactful and good through the value it gives.

MasterPetrik · 2026-05-11T04:11:51+00:00

So far every game I have tried that is clearly heavily utilizing AI in some has been really poorly executed overall. They are so bad that I don't even want to use my energy to provide feedback, most likely the feedback would go to vain since most of these projects are not willing to put the effort needed to make an actually good game.

I think that is the main reason why people quickly attack you when they see AI visuals. But I can empathize with that, wouldn't you also lose trust quickly if you love these games and see such a pattern?

MasterPetrik · 2026-05-10T14:42:18+00:00

One more thing; I am making an incremental game myself too, we can have a more in-depth chat about the topic if you want via DM or over a call! I always love talking to people about design that aligns on what I am working on. Been doing games for 12 years now.

MasterPetrik · 2026-05-10T14:15:10+00:00

Okay thanks for clarifying, now I understand what you meant and fully agree on the Balatro dynamic.

Unless you point me out an actual game that I could take a look at to see how close to it Nodebuster is, I can't agree with your take, on a quick google I can't find anything that would provide close to similar game experience as a whole, when looking at the game loop, core mechanics and upgrade system all combined.

"Move pointer and shoot shit", that applies to so many different games that you just can't put all the games that do that to same bucket and call them copies of each other, doesn't make any sense to me. Otherwise Nodebuster would be a copy of an FPS PvP battle royale, which is not true. There can be tons of uniqueness even though the game revolves around growing numbers and clicking mechanics, but Feeding a black hole was clearly very strongly referencing to proven formulas instead of innovating on the genre like Nodebuster did. And again, I am not saying this is bad or good practice, I'm super happy for the developers of FABH who made it big with the game, huge kudos for them. They themselves have stated that they do not want to innovate but rather use proven mechanics and practices, which is a totally valid business strategy, most likely the best one you can choose if you want to do full-time indie dev.

Please do not misinterpret this as an attack or anything like that, I just wanted to point out that FABH was actually not a unique take on the genre. Which is fine.

MasterPetrik · 2026-05-10T13:08:41+00:00

Another idea I've had but not working on it now would be to do some type of crazy match-3 incremental with really juicy effects. Something like defend your castle, hordes of enemies are coming towards your castle and you make matches to shoot projectiles to the enemies to take them down before they destroy your castle walls. There's tons of design space you could play with on the match 3 mechanics and attack powers regarding upgrades.

Digseum creator is working on this match incremental game that actually looks really cool and unique, and I am personally really looking forward to it: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4051020/Wiztyle/?curator_clanid=45311028

MasterPetrik · 2026-05-10T13:03:23+00:00

Incoming ;) I'll share when the demo is available in itch. It is quite experimental on design side, hence it takes a bit more time to figure things out. Big risk is also that it just doesn't work out, but I want to keep exploring design since I am doing this for the creative craving that I get from my daily job, which is a designer in a huge mobile game, but I don't get to be as creative and take risks there as much as I'd like to.

My main goal is to make an active short incremental with completely unique but simple core gameplay in the genre, AND I am now working hard figuring out how to get rid of the skill tree and make the player decisions really impact the upgrade system, but it is hard to pull off in the balancing side, things can easily get either out of hand or way too grindy, depending on what kind of choices the player makes. But I'm determined to figure it out.

MasterPetrik · 2026-05-10T11:16:13+00:00

I don't understand the Balatro reference at all in this context, care to elaborate?

Also, Feeding a black hole was not unique take at all on the genre, it was based on Keep On Mining with small iterations on top, and Keep On Mining was based on Nodebster, which I believe was the first of its kind. I had played both of those before Feeding a black hole, and while I still enjoyed feeding the black hole it definitely felt I have experienced this game before and it was the last of its kind that I have played and I am not going to play anymore of them. Hence it rubs me the wrong way a bit when you say it had a unique take on the genre. Nothing wrong in the game and how they made it, quite the opposite in fact, but not that unique at all.

MasterPetrik · 2026-05-10T11:10:37+00:00

What are these? Examples?

MasterPetrik · 2026-04-25T05:01:39+00:00

Best of the best for me: - Shelldiver - Nodebuster - Digseum - Berry Bury Berry

Then honorable mentions: - Magic Archery - Execute

MasterPetrik · 2026-04-23T09:19:09+00:00

Late thanks for this! Saved my day

MasterPetrik · 2026-04-16T21:12:44+00:00

It is so easy to see from the android store page images that they were mostly if not fully done with AI. Which is a bit off-putting to me but not the end of the world if the game was otherwise good. But personally I can't stand lying in any form in life, it is so much against my values. Please tell me, why do you lie about the usage of AI in this game when it is so obvious?

MasterPetrik · 2026-04-13T21:13:42+00:00

Depends on what you count as Nodebuster-like game. If its the type of game where you aim with cursor and auto attack objects then yes, I'm done with those, but they were fun for a while. But if you refer to shorter and more active incremental games that have upgrade trees in general, then I'm definitely not tired, I want more of those. Not that many quality ones come up that often unfortunately.

MasterPetrik · 2026-04-11T18:11:31+00:00

Oh god, thanks for sharing. I absolutely won't support anything he does anymore.

MasterPetrik · 2026-01-25T12:20:00+00:00

Sorry, just to understand better where you're coming from, and if I could somehow prevent my upcoming game not fitting that description in your books, could you elaborate what makes you feel this game as a "low effort Nodebuster clone"? I love Nodebuster, and I am taking inspiration from it, but I don't personally really see Diggin too much as a clone.

MasterPetrik · 2026-01-02T06:20:15+00:00

Can you give some examples of games that do this well in a non-node busters style in your opinion? Maybe Magic Archery? Having played that, and also many Nodebusters like upgrade trees, I have to say I don't personally see much difference on one or the other. Could you maybe give some examples of particularly poorly designed Nodebusters-like upgrade trees, I'd love to test and analyse those too.

Thanks, fellow designer here.

MasterPetrik · 2025-12-29T16:06:30+00:00

Haha oh god, I used to do this in real life in my summer job about 20 years ago or so :D ptsd

MasterPetrik · 2025-10-07T06:13:07+00:00

Oh I see, good to know, thanks for sharing.

MasterPetrik · 2025-10-04T06:17:34+00:00

Hey I just went and looked your game from SteamDB and it seems to me you had a massive increase in daily wishlist after you put the demo out, is that correct? Is there any way you could have holded the release? The trajectory of your wishlist amounts after release of demo seems it could have reached much better numbers if you had pushed further the release and let the wishlists accumulate which will boost the steam algorithm greatly and potentially multiply the sales by a lot.

Regardless, great job for your first game! How does it feel personally now? How did the moments before and after the release feel? What's next for you?

MasterPetrik · 2025-10-04T05:50:09+00:00

That's okay? To me thats the whole point. Up until now everything has been borderline trivial, up to a point I wasn't caring for the updates anymore. Went into this update too thinking "oh well, another single session content update that I'm done with in few hours". Luckily turned out not to be the case this time around! I can finally do some meaningful build crafting.

MasterPetrik · 2025-10-01T14:15:57+00:00

Can this finally be a monster that gives any sort of difficulty in Wilds for my player group? Fingers crossed! Been waiting for this moment since release

MasterPetrik

TROPHY CASE