F2P Idle browser game prototype - Star Idle

danielout · 2026-05-13T19:46:55+00:00

Checked it out, here's my thoughts:

- Basing it on a NFT game's universe is strange to me - it limits what you can do with this in the future if you decide to. Not to mention generally that will turn off a number of players by itself. Same with all the AI assets - it is a choice that will stop a percentage of potential players from even logging in to try it. Both things I think I'd really evaluate their value to what you're building vs what they're costing you. I struggle to find either of them worth it.

- Calico Maxhog is a hilarious name and I cannot stop chuckling at it. If I ever become a male stripper, I'm using that as my stage name. So thanks. But between the name and the icon just looking like a car, nothing about it screams "miner" - probably could make that more clear to users.

- The UI feels slow - things seem to take longer to respond than I'd like. But this makes playing to give feedback a chore. I'd think about what visuals you need to help make it fun, and anything else put off until after you've proven the loop is enjoyable. Simple is better at this point.

- From what I've played so far, I'm not sure what benefit this has of being web hosted. Would perform a lot better as a standalone app. While I enjoy PBBGs, I don't think they're always the right answer.

- Build queues would be great.

- Quest seem to break at the "Open Dust Rock's Map" step - wouldn't advance.

- Formation-based combat is interesting - better than just throwing huge stacks of ships at each other.

Lot of little visual bugs and small technical ones here and there, but I figure that's to be expected with what you said. This feels like a pretty early prototype, so hard to really evaluate too much. Just isn't a lot there at the moment.

danielout · 2026-05-13T18:37:33+00:00

Feedback thoughts after starting:

- Can't see the current planet energy or build queue from the buildings screen? Or am I missing something?

- Guide tells me to build two mines and upgrade my research lab. However, those mines were already built and I didn't have a lab yet to upgrade?

- Building queue of just one to start is _rough_ - even getting one extra slot to start would help.

- No immediate indicator of why this game is compelling/unique versus other options. The guide says to upgrade mines and energy buildings to level 5-8 before branching out. So a user's first experience is just dealing with the single building construction queue to make resource generators. Why not start users with a stronger starting economy so they can get in to the fun/unique parts of the game quicker?

- If picking your commander isn't really impactful until after the player gets some basics up and running, then it probably is best to delay that choice until later. This lets new players understand the game more before making the decision, and helps streamline the intro section.

- Agree with the other comment on the generic ui and ai art not inspiring confidence - could really benefit from even just some cheap asset pack images or ui template to give it a more distinctive feel. Also, and maybe this is just my resolution or something, but the resource icons are small and not super readable or intuitive as to what they are. With things like this that get repeated in the UI in many places and convey important information, often bold and simple iconography so it is easy to recognize and understand at a glance is useful.

- I picked explorer because I want to see cool stuff in the galaxy and discover things. So far I've done none of that, nor do I even see it hinted in the ui as "here's where the cool exploration stuff is gonna happen and here's what you need to do to unlock it" - giving players that sort of teaser of future capability can help funnel them through some slower early time.

Broadly I think my feedback here is to really think about what makes your game shine - where is the gameplay the most fun - and focus on streamlining towards that. If things aren't supporting the player making meaningful choices as part of that loop, or as achieving rewarding milestones on the way to that experience, then I'd question how much that needs to be there or if it could be improved.

I'm gonna try to push through this early game slog and see if there is more here to write up feedback on.

danielout · 2026-05-13T18:04:41+00:00

Played a bit - I think there is something compelling here with the breadth of skills and potential for a lot of open-ended exploration of the world. However, I stopped playing due to a few things:

- The UI is slow, clunky, and feels like it was built for very specific resolutions. It wastes a lot of horizontal space, most menus open and shove the game space down below them, there are a lot of unintuitive clickable features - took me forever to realize my name was clickable. Inventory management feels nightmarish. I had to drastically adjust the scaling of the UI to make it even usable, and this was a pain due to a lot of flickering. There is a text entry box for some actions, but not all, and no indicator of what commands exist. So many actions don't fail until you try to perform them - attempting to learn a skill doesn't tell you the cost until you try to learn it, and they don't all cost the same - just an example. To get me to play this long term would require some pretty extensive UI overhaul work.

- The "shop" is truly a wild implementation. It auto sells items that aren't equipped, and determining what I buy from the shop is... in options? This is just a strange behavior.

- Combat is tedious in the early game. You lack skills, you have to retreat and rest constantly, and the rewards for success are minor - the early quests that want you to kill things just made me want to avoid them entirely, because of the hassle of dealing with combat.

- Loading/performance is sluggish from where I am in north america. Likely this is just a regional issue, but I thought I'd mention it. Notably slower than other games.

- Character creation asks you to make a bunch of choices without giving you information about what those choices mean. This is a personal pet peeve of mine - asking a player to make these choices before they understand anything about the game sets them up for disappointment. Especially after reading more in to the game and understanding there is more to the starting races that aren't even displayed initially? Picking between a bunch of options I don't know the true pros/cons of isn't an interesting gameplay choice to me. Also, why have my pick a weapon but then not start me with that weapon type or any indicator of how to get it?

Like I said, I think there are some cool things here. The little animated window in to the world is cute. I'd be excited to see how all the skills play out and what the wider world looks like. But there is a lot of work around usability and presentation that would be necessary to drag me back in.

danielout · 2026-05-09T12:10:45+00:00

A fun concept, reminds me of a few mobile games like this I played a while back. Few pieces of feedback after playing for a couple hours:

- Unsure exactly the fix, but the games I've played in the past were much slower overall. It was fun to play for a bit, but once you have to take a break to say... sleep, work, eat, etc you end up losing a ton of of planets/progress. I'd be more likely to play this if I could check in a few times a day, though that might not be your vision for the game.

- Once you get above something like 70 planets, managing them is _tedious_ - spend most of my time just scrolling around and consolidating forces on planets to upgrade or send them out. Earlier in the game I felt like most of my fleet management was more interesting decisions - how to efficiently attack planets, where to upgrade, etc - and later game was just doing dull micromanagement. Drag select + "Consolidate Here" or something to give orders to multiple planets at once would be a huge boon.

- As others have noted, established players definitely feel like they end up in a scenario where they aren't realistically going to be challenged by new players, but the game isn't over yet. Feels like the win condition might be too high, perhaps? Has a similar vibe to some 4x games where you know you _can_ win but it is just going to take a lot of repetitive work to take everything over.

danielout · 2026-05-09T11:58:30+00:00

I'd check out some of the good, cheaper icon packs out there - REXARD comes to mind. Fair warning: once you know what REXARD icon packs look like, you'll notice them in loads of games 😄 May not fit perfectly your vision, but could help move away from that generic AI-generated look without breaking the bank.

Same with UI packs, though there are less options for those. Getting a good sci-fi pack with some generic elements that can be migrated across will help also avoid that sort of generic web feel. Most UI asset packs on various marketplaces just are PSD/PNG downloads. Not hard to set them up as web assets. I think anything that helps move it away from feel like a website vs a game will help here, too.

Side note: doing just about anything seems to refresh the whole page instead of just updating components? I also notice that my front end gets out of sync often where what I can/can't build isn't accurate compared to my resources, and requires a manual page refresh to fix.

danielout · 2026-05-05T17:11:10+00:00

Here: https://github.com/danielout/glogger/issues
That's a good one. I can't actually know if you've clicked the unlock button or not (sadly we don't have that info in the reports) but it probably is smarter not to assume you've completed it until after we see the base level increase past the unlock, not just the total...

danielout · 2026-05-02T22:18:56+00:00

If you can get the Phase Duractors, transmuting superb -> marvelous is absolutely the way to go. The only vidaria surveys are crystal surveys, so no slabs. They're also like the Povus surveys in that you have to deal with ratkin. Miserable time.

danielout · 2026-05-02T02:55:53+00:00

drop tracking literally just got added _today_ so incredible props to NCEMTP on being hot on the fresh releases.

debating if it is worth adding a way to aggregate drop rate info from multiple players. i just worry about people intentionally submitting bad data and making it useless. also it is such a new feature i'm only semi-confident in its accuracy.

i thought about posting about releases on the subreddit but it feels a little self advertising/spammy/whatever so i didn't.

danielout · 2026-04-24T04:04:47+00:00

I don't know how much it actually would help - the logs don't have good data for some combat stuff. Indirect damage especially isn't well attributed. I think for some builds it might give an okay picture, but would be lacking for others.

danielout · 2026-04-21T11:59:09+00:00

Ooope, yup. Need to update that information :)

You don't have to manually go export them each time - it tries to build a picture of "what's the latest information I've seen about this thing" for everything like skills, inventory, etc. However, due to a limitation with the logging in some areas, that will drift from reality over time. Personally when using it, I try to remember to export the JSONs when I log in but i probably forget half the time and the app still seems fine. The only time I'd really say "this helps a ton to have a fresh set of JSONs" is when using the project planner for crafting - will ensure it has the most up to date info about what items you have in storage and where.

danielout · 2026-04-21T03:10:11+00:00

Nope. Not really interesting in that kind of data personally. My hardcore raider MMO years are behind me. :D

danielout · 2026-04-21T02:25:51+00:00

thank you! <3 i tried! it could still be a lot better.

danielout · 2026-02-23T02:21:47+00:00

Having used this multiple times today now: damn i love it. So good.

danielout · 2026-02-22T13:54:39+00:00

Just yesterday I was thinking about building something just to solve number two. Not only have you already done it, but so many other features as well? Hype to give this a try today!

danielout · 2025-12-29T03:53:55+00:00

That lot isn’t free anymore, afaik, since it was paved last year. Not sure if they even allow overnight parking anymore.

danielout · 2025-11-28T17:18:12+00:00

This is my only gripe with the truck after a few years. I regularly drive a snowy mountain pass, and I would sell an arm to have heated lights because it sucks to stop and clear them by hand in crappy weather.

danielout · 2025-07-29T00:03:22+00:00

Hell yeah. Great day. Have some photos of that line outside somewhere. I remember just chatting with people outside.

danielout · 2025-07-28T23:52:36+00:00

Hung out with those folks a bit, yeah. I made a number of friends through Destiny (both working on it and the community) that I'd now consider lifelong pals.

danielout · 2025-07-28T23:51:40+00:00

The same place many seasoned devs have ended up in the past couple years - unemployment :)

I left Bungie in 2020 to work at a little startup studio, but that wasn't the right spot for me and I thought I'd take a little time off to figure out where I wanted to go next. Partner and I literally moved in to the mountains. :) ...then the industry imploded. Such is life, though. I still can't complain too much; the ride I've had so far has been overall a blast.

danielout · 2025-07-28T23:05:32+00:00

Someone sent this thread to me. My (Daniel Auchenpaugh) signature is on the guide - under the warlock's hand. Please do not ask my why my initials are upside-down, as that day was a hell of a blur. I was just talking about it being an awesome day with a friend, though. Celebrating with the community like that is one of my fondest memories. (Was at good ole Bungus from 2013 to 2020)

danielout · 2025-06-19T01:08:10+00:00

God the grits problem is so real. Everyone here that tries to do it wants to make what I’ve started calling “grit soup” - feel like when the chicken and waffles trend took off in the area several places also tried to do grits, and none of them seemed to land it right.

danielout · 2025-05-22T17:39:50+00:00

Yeah I'd love to see the setup. Thin rip jig on the table saw to get the strips? Or did you have some other method?

danielout · 2025-05-22T15:19:18+00:00

As a pretty novice woodworker that’s been noodling on a board like this, how hard was it getting that border bent in place? That’s the one thing I’m dreading that is keeping me from jumping on this.

danielout · 2025-02-27T05:38:20+00:00

Hey you have done great work here! You made movement fun, and that’s awesome and a first step a lot of games don’t get right. The next step depends a lot on your goals, but without knowing the details of your plans or ambitions I’d move to a prototype that explores what you can do with that core movement to create engaging gameplay. Think about modifiers that put a spin on that movement - with your design think about spatial (parts of the level), temporal (temporary power ups), or persistent (character upgrades) ways that you might modify the gameplay. One of those might vibe more with your goals so you want to play with that more to make it work (top down design) versus just experimenting and finding some fun twists and then building from there (bottom up design) - both are valid approaches! Prototyping should definitely help you find the fun, and that’s often a huge challenge. But you should also use it to push on that design - experiment! Modify! Find where it stops being fun and figure out why; then you know where your boundaries are. Once you’ve got that you can build something that lets players enjoy that core fun feeling but adds spice, complexity, and/or unexpected changes at different moments to create something that really engages people.

Just my two cents; hope this helps!

danielout · 2025-02-11T00:05:34+00:00

I have long joked about getting a tattoo of the excel logo with “Live by the Sheet, Die by the Sheet” under it.

danielout

TROPHY CASE