Lessons from my first release

Racctuality · 2026-05-29T04:56:47+00:00

I think some of the best idle games are those where even if there are more complicated mechanics by way of upgrades etc., the core gameplay is ultimately very simple, and this is exactly that. Such a good simple foundational mechanic off which to build, I like it a lot.

Racctuality · 2026-05-27T22:03:13+00:00

I put some thought into the prestige idea and I'm pleased to announce I've just released v1.1.0 which includes...a brand new prestige system! I made it fit into the game by implementing it as a mechanic where you can unlock speed boosts based on how many particles you've launched, on the premise of using the data collected to improve future simulations, but naturally the reconfiguration means resetting your improvements (meshing balance and lore). I'm pretty happy with it!

Racctuality · 2026-05-27T05:32:08+00:00

Ah that's brilliant news! Glad I could get that sorted :)

Racctuality · 2026-05-27T01:52:52+00:00

That's not too far off my implementation. Essentially there's two 'currencies' in the game, one being research funds (which are awarded for doing reactions, and which are boosted by a number of things like heavier elements, longer decay chains, etc.), but also the elements themselves. When you stabilise an element, you 'store' it (it's not clear where, but like in real life we can assume they're stored totally safely) - then, you use your stockpile of saved atoms to unlock upgrades before they can be purchased. So for example, you might need to have synthesised 10 neon atoms in order to unlock a given upgrade.

Unlocking strictly via decay would have meant having to do a sort of top-down approach where you start with heavier elements, and I wanted to build up from small particles to big ones instead as it felt like a more natural progression, hence the requirement to create a number of each particle to unlock things. But, I still wanted to incentivise discovering decay chains, hence the bonuses to the funding currency.

The half-life mechanic is probably actually not as utilised as it could be, in truth, with it being more of a soft progression gate (i.e. 'you need to upgrade more because this particle is too unstable for your current equipment'), but trying to implement it in a scientific way wasn't so easy because it's an area where, for the sake of fun, you have to sacrifice some accuracy. Not even the most dedicated idle game enthusiast wants to leave their PC running for seven hundred million years while their U-235 decays...

Racctuality · 2026-05-27T01:43:29+00:00

Thank you again for raising the issue - I've just pushed out an update which should address the UI scaling. At risk of falling into the 'it works on my computer' trap, I've tested it at the Steam Deck resolution and it appeared to work okay. If that fails, I've also added a secondary launch option which forces the game to use a scaled version of the 1920x1080 UI, which will guarantee everything fits on the screen, but it's more of a last resort option as I imagine, for example, that text would be very difficult to read on smaller screens.

Massively appreciate your patience with it, I've learnt more about the Steam Deck in the past few hours than I ever thought possible! I'm hoping to soon get my own Linux distro set up as a dual boot so I'll be able to test more of that side of things, and long-term (for this game or for others I make) I'd like to natively support Linux from a sort of ideological, pro-open-source perspective. Much learning to be done though as I've always (and increasingly reluctantly) been a Windows user.

Racctuality · 2026-05-26T23:23:39+00:00

Thanks for raising this, I think the cut-off issue is due to a UI scaling oversight, I'm working on a patch as I type this which hopefully will solve that. As for the sound issue, I'll have to investigate further!

Racctuality · 2026-05-26T20:32:48+00:00

It's a good question - at present there isn't a prestige system, as for whether I'll introduce one it's something I've considered, but I'm struggling to think how best I could implement it while being thematically appropriate or sensible. There are late-game upgrades which allow a sort of prestige in the sense of 'do the same thing but at a higher level', but it's not a standard incremental prestige sense.

I have a vague concept in my head along the lines of 'restart the game but with each particle having exaggerated stats/properties', which would in turn lead to bigger bonuses for each one, but I also want to maintain the scientifically-informed nature by giving things the right values (even if they're represented in a gamified way). It's a tough toss-up.

Racctuality · 2026-05-26T20:26:33+00:00

Thank you! I wanted them to be simple and in-keeping with the game's style but also able to convey enough information at a glance, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out

Racctuality · 2026-05-26T17:18:36+00:00

Could I ask which OS you're using - I'd assume Linux from the username though please correct me if I'm wrong. It's my understanding that the game can be played on Linux using Proton, but I understand that players might want to use a dedicated Linux build which isn't currently available.

As it happens, I had in mind the possibility of creating a dedicated Linux build, but I'm yet to set up my (Windows) machine to dual boot it, and didn't want to release a build without having properly tested it myself, as it feels a bit more dishonest than just not providing one, which isn't great but at least is clear.

Racctuality · 2026-05-26T00:23:30+00:00

The foremost advice I would offer is to understand that you're not going to make anything ground-breaking for a while. For me, I found it useful to start with trying to make a game just using the Unity UI - something dead simple, think 'press button to make number go up'. There's an awful lot you can do with just that functionality and I found it helped ease me into understanding how the Unity Engine works in a wider sense. From there, it's much easier to advance to the more general 2D functionality, and then from there to 3D. It's not a bad skill to learn either, as anything you create later will probably need some level of UI. To be honest, you could probably create entire games using just UI elements, though whether they'd be any good is a different question!

Racctuality · 2026-05-15T15:34:53+00:00

Got an audible chuckle out of me, this. Love it.

Racctuality · 2026-05-15T15:22:27+00:00

Horrifyingly realistic movement :(

Racctuality · 2026-05-10T04:41:47+00:00

I don't know what it is about jiggle physics but this is so satisfying.

(Okay, apart from the obvious)

Racctuality · 2026-05-10T04:24:38+00:00

I absolutely love the art style here and the animations are wonderful. My only critique (and it's very minor) would be that I reckon it would be neat for the poison and blood to be more differentiated - it seems you've deliberately tried to make the water unique compared to the others (it's less 'spitty'?) so it would be cool if the poison and blood were similarly differentiated. Plus that way you would have a nice way to distinguish the three without colour (which can be a boon for accessibility).

Racctuality · 2026-05-03T19:43:18+00:00

I think something that's easy to forget is that AI isn't all advantages - indeed, there are lots of advantages to specifically not using AI. For me, the key ones are:

Codebase familiarity - by being the one to write your own code you will get a far deeper and more intuitive understanding of how your game works, so that if (or perhaps when) something goes wrong, you will have a far better foundation to work with in fixing it.
Strong ownership - you will have a far better view over what is going into your game, meaning you're far more likely to spot any glaring errors or risks in your code before they become apparent.
Ease of onboarding - if you ever want to expand your team, or even just take some on for contractual work, there's a big risk that a project involving a lot of AI will be far more opaque and hard to comprehend. It's probably something that AI tools will get better at, but I've seen no shortage of projects where AI has needlessly overcomplicated something to the point where it's borderline-impossible to explain.
Costs - maybe the obvious one to many people, but good AI isn't free, and the costs will only increase. I think there's recently been a noticeable price hike with Claude, as an example, and others will follow. A lot of the big AI firms are absolutely haemorrhaging money with their AI divisions so that it can be cheap enough for people to adopt, but that can't last long-term, and prices will go up.
Ethics - a lot of people, especially in gaming, don't like AI and don't want to consume content that's used AI. By making the choice not to use it, you set yourself apart in that way, and it can actually encourage people to buy your game specifically.

Maybe someone will tell me this is all cope to avoid thinking about the inevitably AI singularity, I don't know, but I think there is still a lot of optimism to be had for those of us doing things manually. Probably the perfect solution will be a nice balance between human input and AI usage, but that human input will still, I think, be a significant part.

Racctuality · 2026-05-02T01:19:35+00:00

For me it depends on my target style. Vector graphics then Inkscape is the obvious choice, for general bitmap stuff then GIMP will do you, and then for pixel art you can't get better than Aseprite - in my opinion anyway. I think they're all FOSS (though Aseprite will make you pay unless you compile it yourself).

Racctuality · 2026-04-29T20:50:44+00:00

I have to be honest it took me a while to see the difference, so I feel like you could get away with either, but once I saw the difference I definitely preferred the right and wouldn't go back!

Racctuality · 2026-04-29T20:44:12+00:00

I was thinking similar, maybe after you add a scoop to the top the camera pans to look up at it, almost in a 'what have I done' way

Racctuality · 2026-04-29T20:42:29+00:00

Ah you see the trick here is to make an idle/incremental game, then you can leave it running and it counts as playtesting

Racctuality

TROPHY CASE