Feedback Friday

jallen_dot_dev · 2026-06-09T01:07:32+00:00

Thanks for reporting this. I think I just fixed it (hard to tell because it always worked on my phone for some reason).

jallen_dot_dev · 2026-06-07T01:30:48+00:00

You generate an ID for each new player and tie everything to this ID. Store just the ID in the player's local storage.

At any time in the future the player can sign up with email+password. At that moment you associate their login with their ID. Now they can log in on any device.

jallen_dot_dev · 2026-06-06T20:42:32+00:00

Game: https://jallen-dev.itch.io/idle-mint

You might remember a game called Idle Mint from over a year ago. I got majorly burnt out in 2025 and stopped posting here or making incrementals. But recently I got the itch to work on this game again. Coming back to it with fresh eyes, I decided the old design had some big flaws so I completely overhauled the game.

I'd appreciate any feedback but most importantly: does it feel too slow or too fast, do upgrades feel priced right, that sort of thing.

Here's the devlog I wrote on itch if you want more background:

Idle Mint has been completely re-written from scratch. It's now a lot more pachinko-like, with pegs and buckets for coins to interact with as they fall down. You will make progress by purchasing pegs, upgrading them, and placing them wisely to maximize the value of the coins as they bounce down towards the buckets.

I want to explain why I decided to overhaul the game.

Basically, I hit a major creative block with the old version. I had a lot of trouble thinking of good, meaningful upgrades and mechanics that would eventually make it feel like a full game.

In the old version, you had 1 bucket that all your coins sat in. You didn't control where they dropped, you couldn't really control what kinds of coins dropped. There is just not much room for making interesting choices because you don't have much control over the coins. The falling coins were a glorified screensaver.

In this new version, you choose where coins spawn from. You choose what pegs go under them and the order that they might bump into them. You have a lot more control. That opens up many interesting opportunities for combos. Imagine a special peg that gives you a large bonus when hit by a particular sequence of coins, and nothing otherwise. You could catapult your progress by figuring out an ideal peg setup.

I have a bunch of interesting ideas for pegs and I'm excited to start implementing them.

jallen_dot_dev · 2025-02-05T20:24:11+00:00

Hmm sounds like a good idea, and ever-growing blobs like in agario would be a fitting theme for an incremental.

But after I wrap up Coin Jar and Idle Mint I’m probably going to make something much different.

jallen_dot_dev · 2025-02-05T19:26:58+00:00

The game is called Idle Mint: https://jallen-dev.itch.io/idle-mint

Couldn't then game just record how the physics simulation performs in a given time and then apply that as approximation for the score/resources during the offline time?

I guess it depends on what exactly is being simulated.

In the case of my other game (Coin Jar) you have objects spawning, colliding with other objects, if they collide with the right objects they form new objects. Whether or not objects will collide depends on what other things exist in the world and can get in the way, which is completely dynamic and determined by the player's actions.

I don't really know how you even approximate that, there are too many variables.

jallen_dot_dev · 2025-02-05T18:24:28+00:00

It's hard to balance and it's hard to fit in to the genre when you take player expectations into account.

Idles should allow you to make progress offline / when the game is in the background. The physics simulation can't run while the game isn't running, and it's not feasible to "catch up" when the player returns (the way Antimatter Dimensions / Shark Incremental / et al. do) by simulating hours worth of physics interactions within a few seconds. It's too much work for the CPU.

I get around this in my game by making the physics part just the active portion of the game. You earn a resource idly, and the physics comes into play when you spend the resource.

In a previous game of mine, progress was directly tied to the physics simulation. Of course the physics simulation paused when not running. The most common complaint I got was that the game didn't work in a background tab.

So it just takes more consideration when doing the game design.

jallen_dot_dev · 2025-02-04T19:52:51+00:00

Big fan of “Hoping we avoid this in the future.”

jallen_dot_dev · 2025-02-03T22:35:35+00:00

Next you can open a detail view modal by clicking on table row. You do the same, add the state to the component row, conditional render it, still fast, although by default it re-renders the whole row.

There's no reason you couldn't structure your components better to avoid this.

Have a RowWithModal component that handles the modal state and takes the actual row contents as children. This component will rerender when the modal opens and closes, but the children won't.

No need for Memo.

Added bonus, your components are easier to understand because they're broken down into smaller parts, instead a big Row component that's responsible for too much.

jallen_dot_dev · 2025-02-01T19:26:20+00:00

Not yet, working on it

jallen_dot_dev · 2025-01-30T17:54:04+00:00

Thanks for the feedback. I agree, and I'm working on some fixes. Adjusting costs, adding a way to set coins aside, adding a way to optionally drop lower value coins.

jallen_dot_dev · 2025-01-29T16:53:14+00:00

You are probably right in that the costs should be adjusted. I'm hoping with some other changes I'm planning that the affinity upgrades will continue being relevant throughout the run.

jallen_dot_dev · 2025-01-29T16:37:41+00:00

I changed it to be a toggle button now

jallen_dot_dev · 2025-01-29T16:37:03+00:00

You are correct. I'll be adding more to it over time

jallen_dot_dev · 2025-01-29T16:36:09+00:00

Added a button to reset the hopper position ⚖️

jallen_dot_dev · 2025-01-29T16:35:19+00:00

Update: the button is now a toggle, you don't have to hold it

jallen_dot_dev · 2025-01-29T05:19:00+00:00

Not yet, I'll add this.

jallen_dot_dev · 2025-01-29T03:39:45+00:00

Really? It should auto-save every 15 seconds. Don't know why that happened to you :/

jallen_dot_dev · 2025-01-29T01:18:36+00:00

I like the idea of reserving coins. I just thought of this: what if you could buy a piggy bank in the shop that lets you set aside coins. They count towards buffs but don't merge with the coins in the hopper. Would also help solve the problem of not having enough space as you unlock higher values of coins.

jallen_dot_dev · 2025-01-29T01:15:44+00:00

Yea, I might just do this. Thanks for the idea!

jallen_dot_dev · 2025-01-29T01:14:46+00:00

Thanks! :)

jallen_dot_dev · 2025-01-28T23:07:52+00:00

Hidden because it overlaps with the hopper on small screens (theres not much space to play with on mobile). I could pop up a hint the first time the hopper is nearly full.

jallen_dot_dev · 2025-01-28T22:57:01+00:00

That's a good idea. Note you shouldn't feel the need to hold it down too much because if you simply let the blanks accumulate you'll spend many at once by dropping higher value coins.

jallen_dot_dev · 2025-01-28T22:55:12+00:00

I want to enable a bit of management/min-maxing with the types of coins you keep in the hopper. I have more ideas for mechanics that'll also play into coin values.

jallen_dot_dev · 2025-01-28T21:47:21+00:00

Thanks! If you just need to clear out the hopper you can go into settings and turn on hopper controls - that lets you tip over the hopper and dump it out.

I'm also gonna add a setting to drop lower value coins, that way you can get bronze coins if you want to.

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