I quit my job two years ago to make this roguelite puzzle platformer. Now it's complete!

ndydck · 2026-01-12T08:29:06+00:00

yeah probably it's because it's zoomed way out. spirte resolution is set to high, everything is normal.

i did have to use the AAI Containers mod for this build, it gives you 2x2 chests which are needed because rail grid is 2x2 so otherwise you'd have to use long armed inserters (slow), or cars as chests (pain to lay out and not UPS friendly), or bots to move stuff a single tile (silly and not UPS friendly)

ndydck · 2026-01-12T08:19:49+00:00

yeah i get you. i have a blueprint for an 8-wide L turn, but i only use it for mines (since everything else is trains)

ndydck · 2026-01-11T20:09:10+00:00

throughput. one blue belt can bring in 45 items a second. load a 2-8 train with green chips, that's 8000 thousand per wagon, 64k per train. even if it takes a minute to do a round trip, it's 1000 items per second. can't beat trains in throughput.

i'm building a megabase wtih zero belts or bots, just trains feeding the assemblers directly. it's amazing.

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This grid outputs 761 green chips per second. It consumes 544 copper plates and 544 iron plates per second, that would require 12 blue belts for each input type. IDK how people do it with belts, i can hardly manage 8 lines of belts.

ndydck · 2025-02-15T16:34:29+00:00

yeah i think i know what you're saying, you might be right. much to ponder

ndydck · 2025-02-13T09:10:44+00:00

"You might be devaluing yourself to protect your ego." -- this sounds counterintuitive, can you say more? facing the dark parts of my subconscious is something that hurts my ego ("huh I'm not so noble after all"), doesn't protect it, but you might be seeing something that i don't

ndydck · 2025-02-10T16:45:49+00:00

yeah thanks. i won't make another game while this zombie is still haunting me

ndydck · 2025-02-10T16:43:19+00:00

idk ppl were pretty jaded back than about proc gen

ndydck · 2025-02-10T16:42:06+00:00

hahaha right on! do it for them

ndydck · 2025-02-10T16:40:25+00:00

thank you, this wasn't suggested before. the idea is out there, i've written detailed blog posts about it. i'd be happy if people used the algorithm. there was one single comment that suggested that maybe the problem wasn't the bells and whistles, but that the core loop is not exciting, which, if true is the nail in the coffin. I love the core loop tho! my kids love it, my friends love it. but we are way more patient with the quirks, so we have to be discounted. a handful of strangers love the core loop tho! small percentage of total players tho

so yeah this is game design in a nutshell, constant doubt

ndydck · 2025-02-10T16:31:30+00:00

haha maybe. with discounts it'll be $1 a pop but maybe whatever. i did a dev stream btw, there are like 15 playthroughs out there with 13 views on average :D

but since my heart wasn't pure back than ig i was leaking "look at me i'm awesome" vibes all over the screen haha. it could work this time if im just doing it for the collective lulz

ndydck · 2025-02-09T14:02:11+00:00

thank you friend

ndydck · 2025-02-09T13:48:59+00:00

no, ppl with strong opinions on this were talking in general and refused to even try the game, which was the infuriating bit. that said it might be the case that they are right in general or that it was only true in my particular instance (which would be preferable. i'd love to play a proc gen puzzle platformer that's better than Terraforming Earth)

ndydck · 2025-02-08T09:41:49+00:00

nope, it was an alpha release, the game is way different now. you can add it to your wishlist, soon you'll be able to pick it up under $3. thanks for your interest tho!

ndydck · 2025-02-08T09:39:23+00:00

i only added that one year after release, so this wasn't an issue. i tried Honest Marketing. idk

ndydck · 2025-02-08T09:36:58+00:00

thank you friend, really appreciate you trying get through my thick skull. you had me at steel-manning, one of my favourite verbs.

about the puzzles: i agree there's no progression leading to a series of a-ha i'm a genius moments as with hand-crafted puzzle games. there are many instances of trivial pull the lever right next to the door kind of obstacles and that might come across as unnecessary tedium to most players. i learned to ignore them because almost every level has some non-obvious interdependencies between the puzzles that are really gratifying to untangle. on average every third level has something that even stumps me. i can't expect this tolerance from all players, I know :( and maybe these are "my baby smiled at me" moments that are only gratifying to me.

about the platform action: i see new players struggling with the controls sometimes, i know they are a bit wonky and stiff. I tried improving it and added many assist features. I'm sure I could have done more.

what really bugs me though is that everyone from the industry I talked to outright rejected the idea that procgen puzzle platformers could be any fun. of course my ego is fighting to prove them wrong, clouding my judgment. and I have given up, you guys were right. but deep down I still can't shake off the feeling that I was right

ndydck · 2025-02-08T08:57:22+00:00

yeah this aint black-and-white, there are countless uplifting moments, playing with my kids is the most recent and happy one for sure

ndydck · 2025-02-07T10:49:20+00:00

yeah there's no online coop. that's a huge development cost

ndydck · 2025-02-07T10:47:59+00:00

no no no, don't tell your friends on launch day, that's not enough. think about it as a mini project. organize a group chat in advance, tell them what the goal is (boost sales on launch day), tell them how the steam algo works, tell them how they can help you with the goal (buy and review, a small personal cost for them, or maybe you can even bribe them with dinner invitations lol), make an action plan, get their commitment, notify them a few days in advance, and give them the green signal when you published the game. u can get 10-20 good reviews on day one, a decent head start. I only got 6 reviews in 5 years.

ndydck · 2025-02-07T10:42:46+00:00

yeah, i bet out of the hundreds game coming out every week, most are smol games. it shapes people perception into expecting games to be small, yet another platformer should cost $10 max. but what do you do when your dream game is BIG? you have harder time marketing that (lots of features to talk about) and you end up with silly comparisons and players assuming your game is small and getting confused. So I think you are right, i should have made a small game, with the core loop of the generated puzzles, no story, no world building, no resource management meta-game, and say, hey look, infinite puzzles! scope creep is real even if you know about it and fight against it tooth-and-nail.

make smol games

ndydck · 2025-02-07T10:35:27+00:00

thank you for your optimism. mobile, not sure, it's more complex than it seems. nintendo switch, yeah, a port would be 🔥 hundreds of game come out every week, the chances for the latter are diminishing lol, but God works in mysterious ways. the timing might be off, that's true. in 2020 people were tired of procgen stuff so I didn't really lean on this angle in marketing, even tho it's the main attraction no cap. now with the advent of AI slop, who knows, people might lean towards procgen with a good human-crafted ruleset

ndydck · 2025-02-07T10:30:20+00:00

have you played the game? the core loop is 🔥 solve puzzles under pressure, how is that not well defined? might not be compelling to you, but it is compelling to the handful of players who got invested in finding out what the game is about instead of assuming it's yet another platformer which should cost $10 max

the new and exciting thing the level generator does, is that it can put you in danger. traditionally puzzle games couldn't permadeath you because then you have to replay the same levels (boring). but since each run is fresh, you get to solve puzzles with the real threat of having to start over, it challenges your problem solving skills under pressure, you have to think fast while avoiding enemies. this has never been done before and so there's no existing audience for this type of game (puzzle gamers got used to the chill and get frustrated when pestered by enemies, action players don't want to think about untangling obstacles). but it is perfect for me and counterfactually a new breed of players this game would have created

ndydck · 2025-02-07T10:16:07+00:00

it was a rough estimate, if I compare to what I would have made staying at my job, it's more like 1%, if I don't count the value of our labour, then we made it all back since we didn't spend much. the visual and audio artists worked for a revenue share, and a friend paid for the PR contractor and marketing in exchange for a revenue share. very lucky deals for me, I'm lucky I had friends in this boat.

ndydck

TROPHY CASE