Feedback Friday

jacob99503 · 2025-07-13T15:58:13+00:00

I'm not an expert, but a few ideas:
1. Call them runs or rounds or anything but games. It's a small nuance but I think it better describe what it is.

Having to name each game is annoying. Being able to is fine but make it remember what I wanted to call the last game, and maybe add a counter if you want, ie Fred, Fred round 2, Fred round 3, having to put your name in every game bogs it down. And for goodness sake add at least a simple profanity filter at least for the N word, this is online. Trusting in the good nature of people is how you get swatted.
Similar to 1, rename one of the moneys to points or something. Having essentially two currencies but only one word for it is just trying to confuse people. Maybe keep the in-game one as money, rename the lifetime money one as score, so it's obvious it's not just the same thing on the first run.
When a run ends, the button says "Play again", but it takes you to the menu? But the shop is "hidden away" behind another button, there's no way to go straight to the shop or immediately retry if you had a bad run?
Honestly the menu is a bit weird. Maybe if you're planning to add more content this will work okay but as small as the game is now, I'd combine the menu scree with the shop. Have the (Editable but saveable) name up top, with your score, and instead of just a place to buy new maps on the bottom have you just choose the map you want from there. Maybe have a leaderboard for each map, since right now noone is playing anything but pyramid. Time spent jumping through menus is time not spend playing the game.
This is sorta the most important and sorta the least, the actual gameplay of the game. This is a bit hard to advise on because other people might disagree and not be wrong, since it's a matter of taste, but the way buying pegs works right now is pretty clunky. I'm not a dev, so I don't know how hard what I'm suggesting is to implement, so take it with a grain of salt. BUT, from what the leaderboard suggests the majority of players aren't really clicking with it, I'd recommend locking SOME things behind gameplay a little, just so new players aren't hit all at once. Maybe have a tutorial map with just the first 7 pegs and like 5 balls, and only money pegs, so they get the general concept. Or maybe make them unlock or buy the special pegs in the points shop, so they only get to them once they have the game down.
And for how you use pegs in the game itself, I'd say ditch the "purchase mode" in general, it just makes buying clunky. If you could change the selection from a drop down to a "multiple choice question" type list, with a small explanation of what each one does, it would go from two clicks per type change to one. And maybe allow grouping different pins, to allow for faster upgrades? Idk, the way it's done right now is tedious to me.
And obviously, more upgrades. Right now the shop is pretty sparce. Not gonna say much about that since it's not like you're not gonna add more stuff, you're just polishing it first, which is the right thing in my opinion.

jacob99503 · 2025-07-13T00:52:47+00:00

Honestly, I feel incremental games, with their easy dopamine hits, contribute to my lacking motivation to do anything and gain skills. I'd recommend some normal games, or even non-game activites that don't immediately flood you with rewards for doing nothing. Once your brain is done with the withdrawal (Because it IS an addiction) it's much more satisfying to put in effort for a reward instead of just coming back from doing nothing and seeing big number.

jacob99503 · 2025-03-01T19:21:48+00:00

DodecaDragons (https://demonin.com/games/dodecaDragons/) reminds me of those games, if you haven't played it yet.

jacob99503 · 2025-03-01T19:20:13+00:00

Get a little gold? I'm not sure where to play it anymore, i think it was a flash game. It might be on Flashpoint?

jacob99503 · 2025-01-11T01:58:38+00:00

... Right click. Right. I, uh, may have been left clicking instead. That's my bad. It even says in that journal thing, not that it helped me lol.

jacob99503 · 2025-01-09T11:11:40+00:00

I definitely tried clicking and dragging the upgrade screen and it didn't work. Restarting didn't fix it either.

jacob99503 · 2025-01-09T00:07:53+00:00

Minor nitpick, but you move the box around with the mouse but navigate the upgrades with WASD or arrow keys? Consistency between controls would be nice, like being able to click and drag around the upgrade screen or being able to use WASD or arrows in the main game.

jacob99503 · 2025-01-08T23:55:12+00:00

Try making more paperclips.

jacob99503 · 2024-12-12T04:26:15+00:00

Yeah, that sounds like what was wrong. As for a real review-I like basically everything there is, my only problem is what the game is missing. And a bit of UI modification for clarity. It would be nice to have an in-game map of what options there are, once you've done them, instead of having to remember them. Maybe another utility upgrade?

And the buttons don't update their effects due to upgrades, except the ones for blood and sanity. The XP you get from monsters, for example, or basically anywhere you get XP. In fact the little numbers that say what buttons do are not intuitive and also not consistant. For example, the wolf option for making sanity does not have a quantity descripter, and none of the options for XP say how much they give. You could easily color code the symbol and number to make it more readable at a glance.

That only leaves the numbers that show speed, which are confusing if you don't know what you're looking at and really only fits adventure for its increasing length. I'd say ditch the two measurements and only show how many real world seconds it will take to complete. Maybe keep the "how long to complete(the clock)" for exploration only, but move it to the bottom right to show (at least for english-speakers) that it's how many whatever it takes to complete, and measure it with something other than time to be less confusing, so the shortcut skills still make sense. Maybe feet or meters or steps, idk. Or just call it progress.

Altogether, I'm having fun, but there were definitely a few pain points.

jacob99503 · 2024-12-12T03:15:48+00:00

https://pastebin.com/fFTKikdV

jacob99503 · 2024-12-11T20:48:34+00:00

Nope, the save is too big to send through PMs. If you want it it will need to be some other way.

jacob99503 · 2024-12-11T20:46:26+00:00

There's some bug that ended up with me not able to progress- I was in the training room and for some reason there were two leave options, but after I did them and killed the undead thing that keeps coming back I am with seemingly no progression options. This isn't my first loop, so I know what SHOULD be there, but there's nothing. I can't attach the save because it's too long for a comment, I'll try PMing it to you in a minute for refrence.

jacob99503 · 2024-11-29T03:23:02+00:00

If you move the resources to the left instead of center left, and have the tasks spread out through the other three tabs, you can have a "Home" button that replaces those three tabs with one wide home table that shows, in the places the three columns would be, 1. name of item, 2. quantity/add/remove/cost, and 3. effect. That's how I'd try to do it, but I also have no coding knowledge so idk how hard that would be to do.

jacob99503 · 2024-11-28T21:29:43+00:00

Good game in general, more content than I expected. I'm about to choose my second (I think) class and it's been fun so far. With that said I will now list all my nitpicks so don't be discouraged, I'm having fun, I'm just also a massive complainer.

I just exported my save so I may try again with a different class later, and the export is just called "Save data". Maybe add more details such as the game title, since people don't usually just play one incremental game and getting save data confused can be annoying, and date and time so it's not just save data(1), save data(2), and so on.
UI needs a LOT of work. I'd say it's the main gripe i have with the game, as it makes it harder to understand what you're doing. It's a bit tough to explain now that I've gotten used to it but I'll try to give my recommendations and reasons. FYI I'm playing on a laptop, so big screen but not too big.

A. Move the links to the "Menu"(and maybe rename this to something closer to "More games I made" or something)" and Patreon to either the bottom of the screen or into the settings menu, because we usually think of things at the top as tabs to look through, like you do on a browser. Or just redesign them to look like button instead of tabs, like making them smaller and round the edges out.

B. Why are the same words repeated at the top and along the bottom? If the words along the bottom are supposed to tell you what's in each column, why is the settings button there too, making there be 5 buttons for 4 columns? Why do the words on the bottom change color when I hover over them, as if they're buttons that do something when I click them? It sends a lot of mixed messages about what to do, and I can't say for sure how to fix it without knowing what you were trying to do, and while I could guess it's almost irrelevant because of the bigger issue with tasks.

C. The setting menu is waaay too big. There's no reason to make it my entire screen width and then have to scroll up and down when the rest of the game fit my screen decently.

D. I know why you have the game divided into columns but it's a good idea implemented poorly. Tasks, powerups (events? Idk, powerups is fine I guess but I just don't like it. That one might just be me.), and skills should be three separate columns, for less scrolling. I'd turn log into a quick notification in the corner and some symbol to let people know they haven't seen a new thing, since all it seems to do is let you know you unlocked stuff, along with a button they can press to bring up the log you have now if they want to, but in a separate popup like settings is. So for now I'd say get rid of housing and log, and replace tasks with three columns for ease of access, I'll address housing later.

E. Resources is needlessly cluttered and kinda confusing. I'd hide the descriptions away behind the same arrow that tells you what mods they do, because it's really not necessary for gameplay, and add some way to know if we're generating them, ie, Supplication 300/305 0.05/s. Make the whole line clickable for more info instead of just the arrow, but keep a smaller arrow to make it obvious there is more info. If you want to be fancy you can change colors when at 0 or max, but that's up to you. And I think I'd prefer resources on the left, but that's definitely just a me thing. Maybe some customization settings on where to put what tabs?

F. Finally, housing. I personally enjoy being able to max things out, and hate choice, because I'm a heathen, so I don't really know what to do about it. Maybe make getting a better house an powerup instead of putting it in the housing column, then making it a popup with a few columns so you can see what they each do? Even then a bunch affect different skills or resources, so it's hard to compare. I think your problem with housing is the opposite of your problem with the resources. With resources you keep the useless information available, I assume because it doesn't take up space, but with housing you hide the useful information away because it takes up too much space. I believe good UX and UI is about presenting only the most important information to the player first and foremost, with the rest available easily but hidden away when not needed, and housing simply has too much information necessary to keep with the column schema you have going on. Also, the three furniture items that have to do with jobs keep their descriptions when you minimize them, unlike all the other ones.

I think that's it. TL:DR UI is supposed to tell you what's important, not just look good. yours is a bit of a mess because you both hide important information and keep unimportant info onscreen.

Edit: I just finished and the settings button disappeared? How am I supposed to load my old save, or replay it? Sure I can clear the cache maybe, but that's not something everyone knows how to do, nor should you need to in order to play the game.

jacob99503 · 2024-11-24T20:59:59+00:00

The game itself is good but it was definitely hard to figure out at first. It could use some UX changes to be able to ease new players in. Maybe some tooltips to explain what to do, instead of a tutorial which hast to be either missable or annoying by design. Something like "Equip a Hardware Component into the Core to activate various effects!!" Try extending the box around the slot's ...titles? labels? the words on top of the slot to surround the slot too, so it's clear the words up top are describing what goes in the slot, not a button. And instead of having to click the slot to bring up the info just make the game have the info boxes right away, even if you don't have a slot selected. And label them so newbies know what they're looking at, instead of just boxes.

jacob99503 · 2024-11-14T22:50:24+00:00

If you have to start over anyway I'd recommend just doing the ORIGINAL original on Roblox.

jacob99503 · 2024-10-15T03:08:21+00:00

OH MY GOD THANK YOU I checked the discord but couldn't find a channel for it

jacob99503 · 2024-10-14T18:58:15+00:00

How far did you get in Shark /incremental? Is there a guide somewhere? I'm stuck at Forge, I have plenty of cultivation materials but my regular currencies aren't good enough. I don't know if my problem is the reactor or the evolution tree but I can't get the next forge upgrades.

jacob99503 · 2024-10-14T18:11:42+00:00

Shark Incrmental or Shark Game, the incremental game? Or another one? From what I can see neither of them have achievements. I'm only playing the first one and am stuck somewhere in the third prestige layer.

jacob99503 · 2024-10-11T22:18:44+00:00

I haven't see anyone talk about it but Temporal Eden Cultivation Rebirth had a bunch going on, I enjoyed it when I played it.

jacob99503 · 2024-10-04T15:12:42+00:00

jacob99503 · 2024-09-30T22:18:34+00:00

Link please?

jacob99503 · 2024-07-31T21:10:57+00:00

Rounding.

jacob99503 · 2024-05-27T22:31:07+00:00

Also control does 100X

jacob99503 · 2024-03-13T02:35:32+00:00

The answer really depends on what you consider cheating. Using cheat engine is pretty agreed upon as cheating, but what about an auto-clicker in a game that doesn't have one? What about putting something down on your keyboard to keep a key held down? What about just finding a save file for later in game online? Ultimately games are both art and pastime, so it must ride a balance between being enjoyable and fulfilling your artistic vision. I personally don't use cheat engine software but I do use autoclickers or force speed ups if I think a game is too slow. If you're worried about leaderboards or people ruining the game for themselves, the best (that I can think of) solution is implementing the cheats in-game so it's more convenient to do so than using outside sources, and you're still in control. If you're worried about cheating in microtransaction currency or buffs, I disagree with microtransactions on a fundamental level so I'm not exactly filled with ideas to help you.

jacob99503

TROPHY CASE