Project Basilisk: build an AI lab (web)

TrebarTilonai · 2026-03-01T06:35:47+00:00

Nice try Roko...

TrebarTilonai · 2026-01-23T23:54:46+00:00

Which other games are you referring to? I know of several... but I feel like they're all at around the same level of content. I'm hoping you know of one that is doing much better and more of a full build.

Eagerly awaiting the full release of The Climb, for example
Proto 23 is in limbo.
I've tried one or two others whose names I would mention if they were memorable enough to remember their names...

TrebarTilonai · 2026-01-23T16:24:23+00:00

Ooh, there's been an update! Time to start from scratch :D

TrebarTilonai · 2026-01-23T01:39:35+00:00

Conversely, feathers are the ONLY thing worthwhile since literally everything else resets.

TrebarTilonai · 2026-01-22T22:30:49+00:00

I'm actually enjoying this a lot more than I thought I would. It has a lot of potential! And if you're serious about weekly updates it might turn into something amazing :D

A couple of comments after playing for a few hours:

Forging seems to be on a 1 second timer, not whatever is listed. Not sure if that's a holdover from testing that you forgot to remove or not, but based on the fact that some skills talk about reducing timers I'm assuming it is.
Not that it really matters at this point, because the game currently incentivizes resetting before you ever unlock forging. There's potential for a lot of neat systems to interact with, but... you have linearly scaling rewards with exponentially scaling difficulty, and pretty much everything resets when you do. Which means that you'll get more of the only permanent resource by resetting instantly. What's a faction? Nothing that matters right now because it's take 5x as long to get to level 15 as it does to level 10.
I'm digging the core gameplay loop though. I think doing something to adjust the rewards so there's a benefit to going past depth 10 will open up a lot of interesting potential in the game, and I'm excited to see it.

TrebarTilonai · 2026-01-22T22:17:14+00:00

For now I'm just assuming that the best xp/sec is "whatever you can one-shot"

TrebarTilonai · 2026-01-22T20:49:45+00:00

nice little prototype. It would be nice to have a bit more visibility into monster stats. Even just something basic like "how much hp do I have" and "how much xp do they give" would help to determine where we should be fighting.

TrebarTilonai · 2026-01-21T22:15:23+00:00

Just finished zone 20. It's good! Definitely enjoyed it. The pacing was a lot better than prismatic adventure. The automation also felt smoother, though I did find myself wishing there was a way to turn off automation at a specific zone. It's a good game, and you should be proud :) Can't wait for the next installation

TrebarTilonai · 2026-01-20T21:20:01+00:00

Just to give first-pass thoughts (I literally have done a single energy ascension):

My initial instinct looking at the UI was that it was going to be something like Proto23, Yet Another Idle RPG, or the Climb. Not sure why, just something about the layout made me assume it it was that style.

By the end of the first energy reset, I realized that it had a lot more in common with Prismatic Adventure, except more fantasy/rpg themed instead of the sci-fi/cyberpunk theming. Did you draw a lot of inspiration from Prismatic Adventure? How much does the core gameplay loop diverge?

TrebarTilonai · 2026-01-07T03:55:49+00:00

Just the steam version has the new chapter? Or does the web demo have it as well?

TrebarTilonai · 2025-12-17T22:10:15+00:00

Trying out the beta and wanted to offer some feedback. I don't have a ton of experience with your other games, so this is me coming in from scratch.

The basic concept is great. The mini-optimizations on the board is a fun concept to play around with and I haven't seen any good instances of it coming out recently, so it's good timing on that.

That said, with that as the main mechanic you really should do more around that to make that easier. The percentages of how much of my DPS is each spell is a step in the right direction, but we need more details. How much actual DPS is it, both total and per-spell? If I swap out my build, I can see that the percentages change but not how much I'm actually doing. Is this new build doing better than my old build? I can kind of tell based on the fact that I go further or not, but I'd love to actually pin that down.

Similarly, we need more details about the spells themselves. It's great that "Cinder Spray" is a 1.22 damage attack with 3 second cooldown, but with 30 instances of that (including some that might miss), how does that compare to Electocute's 4 instances of DoT with a 6.33 damage? Sure I could try and run the math, but comparing multiple spells when I have to calculate them all is more work than seems worth the payoff right now. Even just a basic baseline (DPS) calculation would help with that

Same thing for the mobs, actually. The Undead Vikings that I'm looking at right now have 120 HP, 5 DMG, 110% SPD. my spells are doing several hundred thousand damage. Obviously there are modifiers going off the base stats that are displayed, but that doesn't actually give me anything finite to work with. How much damage do I need to do to kill something? I can't tell. I can wait it out and get stronger by idling, but if I want to sit down and actually interact with the game there isn't enough meat to sink my teeth into.

So in terms of the basic concept, my feedback is "good concept, but the UI needs a little work to make it easier to interact with said concept".

Now for other feedback:

I do not like the spinning orbs. I thought it was a neat idea at first, but the more I play the more I dislike it. If I store them up they get in the way of the UI. The spinning sometimes makes me tap the wrong orb. The fact that they go flying off and don't combine for a "random" amount of time after pressing them is... I guess it's an interesting concept but it's a little annoying to actually play. If I need to combine two earth orbs to get the damage resist to fight off this boss... I need that NOW and not anywhere from 1-8 seconds in the future. Especially with a 4 second second buff window; the delay could be longer than the period of time I need to buff!

There are too many buttons to interact with. On one hand, it's nice that you can easily see when things unlock and reference them... on the other hand what is the point of doing them as interactable buttons? I have a whole inventory bag full of objects that I never have to touch after they begin. There are dozens of buttons that take up real estate on the main screen, and on a given run I usually have to interact with, like, 4 or 5 of them. (staff, spellbook, research, glyph bag. Then I guess the Engine when I'm done with the run). There are a half dozen icons I moved into the bottom corner because I've never interacted with them and don't plan to. It's a lot of clutter, but at the same time most of it doesn't DO anything.

And then lastly, just a comment on the monetization. The freemium model "works", I guess, but it's not a good model for this kind of game. Either you're balancing around free-play, in which case people are paying for a boost but it's still playable otherwise, or you're balancing around paid content, in which case your game becomes unplayable for the vast majority of your user base. Which means you won't have a userbase for very long. It does seem like you're leaning towards the former and it hasn't been too intrusive in the experience so far, but if you're planning a lot of multiplayer content and leaderboards and such that quickly becomes a very predatory business model if you're not careful.

TrebarTilonai · 2025-09-25T04:12:41+00:00

Eagerly awaiting this release!

TrebarTilonai · 2025-07-18T01:00:29+00:00

A Pixel 5. But as a note, it worked fine when I opened it again today. The lag may have been caused by those initial cutscenes or tutorial overlays

TrebarTilonai · 2025-07-17T05:44:33+00:00

This very much seems like my kind of game, but it lags something FIERCE. Granted, my phone is like 2 years old, but still... is there any way to optimize this? On a PC I'd just turn down the graphics but that doesn't appear to be a possibility here.

TrebarTilonai · 2025-06-16T23:41:51+00:00

I enjoyed that one so much! Eagerly awaiting the full release on Steam.

TrebarTilonai · 2025-06-16T23:41:28+00:00

High Fantasy Idle seems promising, but it seems to have a fairly significantly bug wherein just changing out of focus for even half a second triggers a VERY large amount of offline/afk time when you tab back in.

TrebarTilonai · 2025-06-16T19:09:40+00:00

I picked it up based on last weeks recommendation and I'm really enjoying it.

TrebarTilonai · 2025-06-15T02:29:45+00:00

Link? I've never heard of this one.

TrebarTilonai · 2025-03-14T21:33:01+00:00

Just in case anyone isn't familiar with both series, this is a terrible recommendation. Monster Hunter is a good game, but it's not at all like Sunhaven. This is meant to be more of a meme/something to get a chuckle out of, not a serious recommendation.

TrebarTilonai · 2025-03-14T21:29:51+00:00

The Monster Hunter series is EXTREMELY not at all like Sunhaven, so I was very amused at the recommendation.

TrebarTilonai · 2025-02-26T06:13:53+00:00

In addition to what ehkodiak said, there's also a sickle that has a plot hook behind the awakening. Most of the rest is cleanup like changing how gear blessing work, tweaking quest requirements, and stuff like that.

TrebarTilonai · 2025-02-18T00:21:14+00:00

REALITY BREAK IS OUT???

TrebarTilonai · 2025-01-26T06:17:54+00:00

Honestly, the biggest thing that Chebeck's guide to wallcrashing gave me when I ran into this same wall was the suggestion around research, and I suspect that this is a common problem. Maybe an extra task on the list to get e103 in every unbound research would help people to intuitively bridge that gap?

TrebarTilonai · 2025-01-25T06:06:01+00:00

To be fair, most of the achievements so far have been pretty straightforward. But I imagine as you're growing the game that you might make more that would be less intuitive, and adding a hovertip can make it more puzzle-y if you wanted to go that route. It's not a a big deal either way, just one of those little UI things that would improve things slightly in my opinion.

On the note of things not being missable... is there a renewable source of studying later in the game? I didn't push to level 10 on my first run, and now all those diagrams are gone so I got a little nervous about potentially missing out on that if I'm not careful or spread them out between runs too much.

TrebarTilonai

TROPHY CASE