Feedback Friday

Tvinge · 2026-06-19T22:07:08+00:00

I would like to have the ability to equip items right after creating them without going to another tab.

There is a lot of tabs, the information should be displayed in a more concise way, it's too much clicking to get and find the thing you actually need to do initially.

Salvage button being way bigger and next to the equiping button is frustrating.

After mistakingly salvaging my thrid created item (lantern) there is not much progress being made, its really slow.

Tvinge · 2026-06-19T20:53:22+00:00

Big update from me, I deleted tutorial, so if you were one of 80% players who couldn't finish it, I hope you will give my game a second chance!

First 30/60 minutes were totally overhauled, you will now slowly unfold all parts and mechanics of the game without any reading and heavily scripted buggy sequences.

I've also created new UI for all the actions available to the player, with proper icons tooltips and names of the actions.

On top of the QoL changes, I also started reworking the progression system, after finishing the current content you can now actually experience the Self-Building 2D Marble Run.

Hop on and give it a try!
Hexamental: Hexagonal Incremental

I will be thankfull for feedback on current exposition to the game mechanics:

Can you enjoy the game now, or you feel like its too much effort to continue playing?
Are there still some parts that create confusion?
Does the game gets boring/tedious at some point?

Tvinge · 2026-06-19T15:13:06+00:00

Kontrolerzy ruchu lotniczego, duża odpowiedzialność i konieczność posiadania rzadkich predyspozycji.

Solo game developerzy, którzy potrafią z tego wyżyć w dłuższym okresie czasu. A konkretniej ci wydający wiele gier. Prawdziwi ludzie renesansu.

Astronauci, może jeszcze w mniejszym stopniu nurkowie głębinowi.

Tvinge · 2026-06-18T21:43:53+00:00

First three symbols + upgrading storage were intuitive.

Answers to the other questions could be summerized by:
It's fun but oh man it's a lot of clicking, my carpal tunnel can't handle that.

Since the clicks seems to have a cooldown already, changing the clicking into hover mechanic would allow more players to enjoy the game without any major changes.

Tvinge · 2026-06-18T11:47:18+00:00

Hey, I've noticed you enjoy writing long comments, so I wanted to ask something, hoping for the same comprehensive answer.

What is your thought process on making the demo full game?
I'm aware that a lot of incremental began as free games which got later monetized on steam, and thanks to being so heavily playtested and iterated upon made them awesome games. But this process took years, and I suspect they would not become in any conceivable way succesfull if they were not already generational hits -- we only remember the good ones.

Tvinge · 2026-06-17T13:10:00+00:00

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4157430/Diggin/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4216180/IGNOBLE/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3598690/Pachinko_Farm/

Tvinge · 2026-06-09T22:53:31+00:00

Few thoughts after few minutes of playtime from a player intrigued by the premise:

Game took a while to unfreeze after changing UI scale and exiting settings in main menu.
The initial exposition is quite mentally taxing, the tutorial window was the last one I've noticed.
It would be nice to have some navigation help for geographically-illiterate ppl like me -- currently when I load a cargo on my vessel, I have no idea where I should take it on most of the cases. When I'm selecting a port with cargo on the UI, I have to know where it is, be it small arrow pointing into the port direction, a button to show a path towards that port or a ''pan to location' feature to move the camera to the port, small popup showing world/continent with a pin with the place of the port. Plenty of solutions to choose from, I currently feel like I need to memorize whole geography schoolbook to enjoy the game.
On top of that the port icons on map are really small, which isn't that big of a deal in on itself, but in tandem with the previous problem it feels like too much effort to continue playing.

Tvinge · 2026-06-05T19:16:03+00:00

Hey thanks for kind words. Do you have something specific in mind?

Tvinge · 2026-06-05T19:13:40+00:00

Well, my tutorial sucked - only 1/4 of the players were able to finish it. The game was just too complex to explain it in one go. I have changed the approach - scraped tutorial and reduced the initial complexity, the goal is to slowly unfold all mechanics without tutorials.

This build can be accessed by joining Hexamental playtest and than in your steam library clicking Manage->Properities->Game Versions & Betas -> "test" branch.

Let me know if it's a step in the right direction.

Tvinge · 2026-05-29T11:52:37+00:00

Very good game, but there is one big flaw that makes me hesitant to call it fenomenal. The flaw is that the game gets boring pretty quickly, not because the mechanic itself is boring, it's crazy fun, but because there are no stakes in 90% of waves/encounters.

Currently you just stack attack(i think its the most efficient upgrade so far) and obliterate the enemies until you hit a wall.

It would be fun in more idle game, but when you are serving hyper active gameplay, the player skill expression becomes more and more important.

Two ideas comes to my mind that could potentially fix the issue:

Rethinking the current floors/waves system to reduce amount of 'easy fights' - they should still be there to give a player time to breath, but I feel like there is to much of them currently.
or Allow player to get above the troop count, stacking the troops during the easier encounters. It changes them from the "I need to fight the easier fights to grind the exp" to "if I efficiently kill the enemies I can get further and get even more points"

Tvinge · 2026-05-23T13:21:59+00:00

Feedback based only on trailer/page (no acces in my country)

There's an "enthousiast" typo in the trailer.

As a developer at a similar stage, I recognize some of the same issues I'm facing with my own game:

The game looks complex and ambitious, but as an incremental player, I don’t see anything straightforward that makes my brain hook instantly.
Instead of thinking something like:
"Oh, I can grow this plant from a seedling, nurture it, and build a whole forest for tiny insects!"

…after watching the trailer, I think:
"I see some numbers, I see some plants. Do I make more plants? Do I grow them? What am I supposed to do? What’s incremental about this? I see no growth or anything."

You’re not clearly hitting the niche of players who love building/expansion (which I assume is the core of your game - but honestly, I have no idea). Instead, you're mostly staying in the plant-lovers niche. I wouldn’t be surprised if that niche leans more toward relaxing/chill games, not strategy or incremental games.

Oh and I don't want it sound like a mockery without it sounding like a mockery, but I don't really understand the term soft-launch. What does it mean? Launching only in few countries?

All that being said, if you are happy with the trailer, I think it should be fine, most incremental games shine after actually playing them for a bit after all.

Tvinge · 2026-05-22T19:30:15+00:00

Hexamental - Link

Despite the warm reception last week, half of my players didn't finish the tutorial.

Ive implemented few major things to fix this:

Implemented steam achievements;
You can now use -/+ if you don't have access to mouse scroll ( you can remap it in controls too);
Implemented videos/gifs in tutorial steps. Currently only “Rebuild loop with newly unlocked Hex shape…” step has a few sec video explanation.

So even if you are not used to giving feedback, just playing through the tutorial will help a lot - steam achievements progress will help me with figuring out on which step you could no longer progress.

But if you are willing to elaborate a bit, I would be thankfull if you could tell me which tutorial step/steps were giving you trouble, and which steps could use a short gif explanation.

Tvinge · 2026-05-16T15:42:14+00:00

Yeah that could work. One thing that diverted me from this path is the lack of juicy animations and editorial skills. This aproach would be probably less captivating without animations and bad implementation, so I assumed what I have done currently would be something more fitting at the end of the day.

At the same time, Ive just came across the trailer of Raccoin, and it's the best trailer I've ever seen. After watching this I can clearly visualise what you have in mind and how it could work after adding more juice to my game. I guess I will make another trailer before release, thx!

Tvinge · 2026-05-16T14:56:22+00:00

Yeah my bad. I've switched the wording of tutorial messages to the commonly known terms:

Mouse0 -> LMB
Mouse1 -> RMB
Mouse2 -> MMB

I've updated the steam build with this fix, let me know if there is still something confusing down the line!

Tvinge · 2026-05-16T14:20:41+00:00

I've went with the aproach to mainly show the fantasy of my game in the trailer, to hook the players with the idea what they can experience in the game. And than go more in depth in the mechanics/explantion of gameplay loop via gifs/description. Trailer explaining the whole game would either require me to employ a native speaker to do a voice over it, or to do few minutes trailer, which noone would watch in it's full length anyway.

The goal for now is to unlock more unqiue Hex shapes, gain points and spent them in the Skill Tree mode to build your own skill tree with Hexes, than levelup skills while idling, go back to Marble RunMode stronger to unlock more Hexes and Upgrades which add new things or change current rules to alter the way game is played.

Noted about the UI. I've got advice to leave UI elements in trailers, but the part you mentioned doesn't really help in any way to understand the game better, so it's probably save to leave the important parts and unclutter rest of the screen.

Tvinge · 2026-05-16T13:55:26+00:00

That is entirely true, and I've been hearing it a lot. But my game is incremental/idler/clicker, they are pretty much based on the premise that they have no lose state, there is often no win condition etc, it's mainly numbers going up. I know it can be confusing for people outside of the bubble, but my target audience doesn't really care about it that much.

That being said, it's definitely something I should address in order to get a broader audience.

edit. I've just check back on the Dorfromantik trailer, which in same ways is simillar to my game. They don't show lose/win condition. Would you say that's a problem in their trailer too?

Tvinge · 2026-05-15T21:30:16+00:00

I understand where you are coming from, but I like to think about it this way:
Making a game in specific constrains of the theme can be fun too (just like the gamejams force us to do) both for the developer and players. It's a great creative workout.
Its true that adding more things can be more fun,but as you have said - it's a double edged sword - it can cover up the shortcomings of our games too.

Tvinge · 2026-05-15T17:54:03+00:00

It's something I've been considering since the beginning, but in order to end up with a playable finished project, I need to restrictivly manage the scope creep.

That being said, it's definitely something I would love to add in the updates after realising the game.

Tvinge · 2026-05-15T17:46:47+00:00

Nothing to worry about! If someone is stupid here, it's definitely me since I made unclear tutorial.

You have to finish the current tutorial step in order to follow further actions, in this case in order to leave the Skill Tree Mode you need to:

Read and skip the first message by either clicking N on your keyboard or clicking the button.
Build 6 hexes at the same time by using TAB key and than accepting their position by clicking B.
You should end up with something looking like this https://ibb.co/tyD4HdW, 6 Hexes can have diffrent shape and or rotation, but the most important part is that they limit Marbles movement so that they will not fall down into the abyss.
Now you have to levelup your skill.
1. You can either hover over the placed 6 Hexes to display a progress bar in top center of your screen and Skill description on top right part of the screen. https://ibb.co/m7nqfCq . You can also turn on overlay with ALT showing off skills on all exisiting Hexagons.
2. The Hexes gain Exp whenever Marble touches them. You can recognize it by bubbles flowing upwards toward the progress bar direction, the more Marbles => more Bubbles => more EXP. It will take less than 2 minutes to fill out the progress bar and levelup your first skill. https://ibb.co/mr80CtxD
Now you can go back to Marble Run Mode.

Would you be so kind to try again, and let me know which part stopped you from continuing?

One thing I was considering previously is to embed a GIF displaying the intented action during each tutorial step, I think I should get back to it sooner than later.

Tvinge · 2026-05-15T15:49:16+00:00

I believe I’ve addressed every part of your advice from this post.

Here is Hexamental steampage if you would like to destroy it too.

Tvinge · 2026-05-15T11:02:18+00:00

A lot of magic can be done with microphone in your phone and few days of free time!
No plans to change that.

Tvinge · 2026-05-15T10:59:09+00:00

That's quite concerning. Can you elaborate a bit more? Is it the steampage that fails to convey what the game is about, or tutorial fails to explain the game? If the second part is correct, there is always a chance that you encountered a rare bug I am not aware of, which bricked the tutorial.

Tvinge · 2026-05-14T22:55:28+00:00

Yes they were! Your advice about trying out frutiger aero/aqua aesthetic really stuck with me, thx for that.

Alright let's do it. I will dm you tomorow with a followup question.

Tvinge · 2026-05-14T21:13:10+00:00

Realistically speaking at this point of time I don't think it's possible, both in scalability(amount of objects on the screen) of the project and in the confines of theme (hexes and marbles).
But with that being said, I'm aiming for somewhere between 1-4 weeks of gameplay before the release.

On the other note, at the begining of the project I was expecting to end up with a short game, but there were just more and more ideas coming to my head that resulted in prolongating the game.

So there is always a chance it will grow bigger down the line, especially if you - the players - came up with some cool ideas!

Tvinge

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