At first I thought you needed to craft all items but it's really only the final item. Skipping the Trash, Fridge, Pitchforks, Bows, and Hospital, I got this:
Hey there! I got the game on steam and have been looking for a place to post bug reports... do you have a discord or anything or is this the best spot? I am really enjoying the game but there's a few things that really lower my motivation sometimes.
Archers are a little hard to figure out, sometimes they just won't shoot and one time one harvested a resource when things respawned, I believe it was either fiber or berries, and just refused to attack any enemies. Maybe I missed a prompt on their description about their range? If so, maybe when the player has selected an archer and is dragging them around, islands around them could be highlighted in red or something indicating their ideal range (changing as the archer is dragged around)? I find the description text in the bottom left very hard to remember to check, so maybe I just missed something.
Less frustrating, just confusing is related to food and units. I've found that it's easy to break and pass the max level for units by just continually feeding them food and didn't know if that was intentional? Usually feeding them food in groups of 3 is what breaks it. I say 'breaks it' because if they did have stars before, I'll find them removed and the prompt for the "food to power up" reset. I had a knight with both stats into the high teens before realizing that that might not be what was intended, maybe it was! I think the three star knight had lower stats than that.
Also, after coming back to a saved game, all the furnaces and alters were gone.
I'm on my phone currently but if you need screenshots or anything I'd be happy to provide later! This game has been so much fun though and it's really incredible that you made it in less than the months! Well done and thanks again for creating such an enjoyable game :)
Edit: back to my computer with screenshots!
I uhhh got a little carried away with food on this one....
This is a water thing not producing even with the worker, had to build a new one:
This is my worker past its max level, with no stars anymore:
Hey, thanks for the good feedback! I think you've officially broke the record for the most bugs found lol. Gratz! ...I think haha
Also the strongest knight I've ever seen lol
Archers are def a big buggy currently but I really like your recommendation about showing some kind of user feedback range.
Feeding knights/archers is definitely just imbalanced all around. But since combat isn't a huge driving factor currently, I didn't spend much time on the leveling-up factor.
The save/load functionality not loading furnaces and alters is pretty game-breaking. But it does make sense that it might be furnaces and alters since they share some of the same code. Are you on mac or windows out of curiosity?
Thanks for such a quick reply! And I'm on windows :) I really like chatting game design so I'm glad you found notes helpful! I know it's a whole other thing to implement haha.
That's fair, with the combat that it's not a big priority since there's not much to it currently. I admire that you could notice that and decide it for later, sometimes I get tunnel visioned in things I work on before realizing I wasted time 🥲
Back to food real fast, I don't think it's entirely balanced for workers either since it just speeds them up a lot but it depends on how you want the game to be played. If you want to encourage speed running (which is slightly incentivized already by posting the number of days it took to win), then it might be unbalanced since just focusing solely on food at first snowballs things. I haven't truly challenged myself yet on that but I did win in 16 days with only 8 population with that strategy in mind. I could definitely see how fast I can do it and let you know 😆
I have a lot of other thoughts but 1) Kinda hard to type it all out here haha and 2) I want to respect that each creator has their own ideas in mind and I don't want to be the player that just goes "hey add this! Hey add this!" It's a great game so far and I think it really has some great potential so again, thanks for making it! I've had a blast playing it.
It will forever be special to hear the words "I had a blast playing it"! So thank YOU. I totally agree there are lots of cool features and/or content that could be added to this game to make it something potentially really worth playing over and over. I've also had the thought of leaning into the whole speed-running thing which I think has a chunk of potential there. Tbh I spent very little to almost no time actually balancing the game haha. You could definitely still consider the game in "alpha" but I just wanted to get it out there to see if people liked it. I'm a bit mentally over working on it atm, but I could totally see me re-visiting the game a little while down the road and trying to make it something that really shines.
Hi, I am a Korean gamer. Many Koreans love the game called Stackland. And I found this game has the potential to be as good as Stackland.
These are my suggestions: 1. I hope there is a boss monster like the devil that is powerful enough to make the player feel accomplished when they beat it. It would be a good idea to find it in a particular area while protecting a particular artifact or summon it through specific combinations.
2. In the game, I found there were many high-tech items such as cars, semiconductors, batteries, etc., but I was disappointed that they weren't much useful. The hospital was a good idea. It would be fun to use batteries and semiconductors to make a greenhouse or a factory that automatically produce food or something with no need of farmers.
3. Later, the inventory quickly fills up and the tiles are easily messed up with resources. I hope there's a way to organize this (ex. a building that can store some resources like the refrigerator, or the ability to scroll up and down the inventory)
4. I think it's a little too much to have three big tabs that give information on screen. It would be nice to be more simplified. (The biggest advantage of your game is its simplicity.)
5. There is a bug that cannot be pulled out when a knight or archer enters the house. (found in alpha v0.9)
The concept of this game is very good. If you keep adding more content to the game, it will be much greater. Keep it up!
I beat the game after the GameDev stream, and towards the end I was getting a little frustrated at trying to keep track of all of the things. I also realized that once someone uncovers copper, a chest, a boss, and oil, there isn't really a reason to explore further. For me, the satisfaction of having to search for a hidden secret or having an achievement of exploring everything is something I prefer, but I may just be a completionist like that. Good job on the game, and hope things go well for you.
So cool to see you played thru and beat the whole game up to its current point! Do you have any fun ideas that would make the end of the game exploration or some kind of achievement more satisfying to the user?
Sorry about the late reply, I don't hang out on itch very often. A couple ideas off the top of my head could be percentage of the island explored, which of course would make the completionist want to get to 100% and shouldn't be too hard to implement. The other thing that comes to mind right away would be something that can only be found at an edge of the island, perhaps one of the later game requirements, though that could backfire if someone has to search a long time to find. Thanks for the reply.
I have to preface this by saying that I generally speaking don't play these kind of games and only played to help a fellow gamedev "get gud ";)
At any rate, to me it wasn't clear as to how to play this ... so the first thing I did was drag the resources I made into the little window on the right (I expected like a house unlock to appear) ... at least I thought I did ( as it apparently dragged it on a tile I couldn't see ...and one of my minions died ) and then I couldn't click on anything anymore .
And to me it is unclear how to actually build a house , I think it would be better if you just get a pop up once you have enough resources to build a house showing a house icon (which you can drag on teh map).
The music score is good though and I like the overall look and feel ... keep it up!
Thanks for the feedback! :D I hate tutorials as much as the next guy, so I'll keep trying to make things as intuitive as possible. But out of curiosity was the tutorial unclear or was it snap-minimized to not bother reading it (which is fine I do that sometimes haha).
I didn't notice any instructions or tutorials tbh ... I basically played it by doing what felt natural or logical from my pov., So when the resources started stacking up I thought the lower right window was a container where I could get the building process for a house to start. And I didn't get the toolbar you had in the demo with Rick and Tim (btw for multi-select you should have a click and hold mechanism , just lmb ). Now from what I gathered, you don't want to spend months on this anymore, which is understandable.
So I won't bore you with more text, but I think that if you elect not to use a tutorial(or at least have it available) , then the UI experience should be a bit more polished I think .
But again I don't play games in this genre, closest thing is Civ6...but there (if I have time to play ...or just get sick of developing my own game -fixing effin bugs in king of crokinole) I never read or do the stat thing, I basically pick Alexander and take over the world through warfare ... and I don't know anyone who goes for the other victories ...and if they do, I am unsure if I really do want to know them :)
So maybe you need to take my words with a grain of salt , I just know that sometimes you're so deep into your game that you miss the bigger picture ...happened to me a lot of times and then it helps to get a complete outside view
Awsome work. I like it. Two things I think it COULD use is scrolling view with mouse and right click instead of shift... just so I would never have to use more then the mouse.
Oh no sorry I mean scrolling as in moving the camera around the map. Now you move the view with wasd. What I meant is if you add that when the mouse is near the edge you move the camera that way. Eks. Put the mouse to the top of the window would do same as w etc.
O oh gotcha. And yes, I think I'm unclear as well, you can indeed move the camera around the map with middle mouse button as well. Holding the middle mouse button down and dragging the map around. But I like your suggestion to also do the near edge movement which I can't think of any reason not just to have them all as options :D
It was really fun - I love this type of games. I do have few more comments:
1. I found no reason what so ever to create archers. 3 knights were sufficient enough to kill all the enemies anywhere, especially after building hospital.
2. I expected the fridge to be storage space rather than 'processing station'. As a result I destroyed all the food resources I had. I would suggest it processes food as other stations - with farmer or something. That way if somebody makes similar mistake they will not lose everything as I did.
3. This is really personal opinion - I am not saying it is correct or valid but... I feel the items like computer, car and circuit to be a little bit out of place. Everything else seemed to be more fantasy based.
4. I wish some crafting resources where more useful. In the sense that I produced milion bateries and milion graduation caps to use them in 1-2 receipies.
5. When the new resources spawn and my farmers get killed I would love to have a quick way to see where it happened. Maybe under the 'idle' button there could be another one for 'warning' or something like that and when you click it it takes you to important event place.
Besides that I really think you have done great job. The game seems very polished, I didn't encounter any bugs or anything like that. The pixelart is very cute and works very well. I cannot wait to see where you will take it next!
O hey! Sorry for the late response I was out of town until yesterday so I just saw this message! Thank you so much for playing and for the positive feedback. Means a lot to hear that people are enjoying it so far!
1. I have not discovered how I can kill my people if I need dead bodies. The only way I managed to get one dead body was by sending a farmer to a tile with enemy. ---- Ya that's it. Kinda just got to kamikaze someone if you need a body haha. 2. I would love to have a shortcut like SHIFT + Click or something that would automatically pick up the items from the ground and place them in the inventory.
There is! But a few people missed this in the tutorial and tool tips...So perhaps it should be more explicit somehow. It even is shift + click XD haha.
2. I expected the fridge to be storage space rather than 'processing station'. As a result I destroyed all the food resources I had. I would suggest it processes food as other stations - with farmer or something. That way if somebody makes similar mistake they will not lose everything as I did.
I'm not entierly sure what you mean so maybe I'm misunderstanding. But that's essentially what it is? You can take the food back out in the form of another food item and use it the same way to feed workers etc. But the alt sprite is a bit confusing.
---
I really like your other suggestions in #4 and #5 as well! Especially some kind of notification bar would help a lot! I think I have just the idea to implement that but it hadnt' crossed my mind until I read your comment, so thank you!
So cool to see the screen shot of you beating the game!
Hey, I have seen your game on the FB group. I love it. To be fair it's one of the most pleasant and relaxing games I have seen in a while. Over all everything seems to work great and the design is pretty clear. There are few minor things though:
1. I have not discovered how I can kill my people if I need dead bodies. The only way I managed to get one dead body was by sending a farmer to a tile with enemy.
2. I would love to have a shortcut like SHIFT + Click or something that would automatically pick up the items from the ground and place them in the inventory.
3. I missed a message about what the towers do during tutorial and it took me like 30-45min to discover that they are used to uncover the map. I was close to switching off the game because I couldn't figure it out :D.
Today I will be playing a bit more and maybe I will have more feedback :)
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If one memorizes the recipes and never bothers with the farm/researching thing.. this happens I guess lol
We'll see if I can beat this eventually xD
At first I thought you needed to craft all items but it's really only the final item. Skipping the Trash, Fridge, Pitchforks, Bows, and Hospital, I got this:
Holy moly that's fast! Haha. The fastest time I've seen yet! How many tries did this take you?
Sorry for the late reply! I didn't count so it's hard to say, probably somewhere around 10 (give or take) after trying for a speedrun?
Hey there! I got the game on steam and have been looking for a place to post bug reports... do you have a discord or anything or is this the best spot? I am really enjoying the game but there's a few things that really lower my motivation sometimes.
Archers are a little hard to figure out, sometimes they just won't shoot and one time one harvested a resource when things respawned, I believe it was either fiber or berries, and just refused to attack any enemies. Maybe I missed a prompt on their description about their range? If so, maybe when the player has selected an archer and is dragging them around, islands around them could be highlighted in red or something indicating their ideal range (changing as the archer is dragged around)? I find the description text in the bottom left very hard to remember to check, so maybe I just missed something.
Less frustrating, just confusing is related to food and units. I've found that it's easy to break and pass the max level for units by just continually feeding them food and didn't know if that was intentional? Usually feeding them food in groups of 3 is what breaks it. I say 'breaks it' because if they did have stars before, I'll find them removed and the prompt for the "food to power up" reset. I had a knight with both stats into the high teens before realizing that that might not be what was intended, maybe it was! I think the three star knight had lower stats than that.
Also, after coming back to a saved game, all the furnaces and alters were gone.
I'm on my phone currently but if you need screenshots or anything I'd be happy to provide later! This game has been so much fun though and it's really incredible that you made it in less than the months! Well done and thanks again for creating such an enjoyable game :)
Edit: back to my computer with screenshots!
I uhhh got a little carried away with food on this one....
This is my worker past its max level, with no stars anymore:
Hey, thanks for the good feedback! I think you've officially broke the record for the most bugs found lol. Gratz! ...I think haha
Also the strongest knight I've ever seen lol
Archers are def a big buggy currently but I really like your recommendation about showing some kind of user feedback range.
Feeding knights/archers is definitely just imbalanced all around. But since combat isn't a huge driving factor currently, I didn't spend much time on the leveling-up factor.
The save/load functionality not loading furnaces and alters is pretty game-breaking. But it does make sense that it might be furnaces and alters since they share some of the same code. Are you on mac or windows out of curiosity?
Thanks for such a quick reply! And I'm on windows :) I really like chatting game design so I'm glad you found notes helpful! I know it's a whole other thing to implement haha.
That's fair, with the combat that it's not a big priority since there's not much to it currently. I admire that you could notice that and decide it for later, sometimes I get tunnel visioned in things I work on before realizing I wasted time 🥲
Back to food real fast, I don't think it's entirely balanced for workers either since it just speeds them up a lot but it depends on how you want the game to be played. If you want to encourage speed running (which is slightly incentivized already by posting the number of days it took to win), then it might be unbalanced since just focusing solely on food at first snowballs things. I haven't truly challenged myself yet on that but I did win in 16 days with only 8 population with that strategy in mind. I could definitely see how fast I can do it and let you know 😆
I have a lot of other thoughts but 1) Kinda hard to type it all out here haha and 2) I want to respect that each creator has their own ideas in mind and I don't want to be the player that just goes "hey add this! Hey add this!" It's a great game so far and I think it really has some great potential so again, thanks for making it! I've had a blast playing it.
It will forever be special to hear the words "I had a blast playing it"! So thank YOU. I totally agree there are lots of cool features and/or content that could be added to this game to make it something potentially really worth playing over and over. I've also had the thought of leaning into the whole speed-running thing which I think has a chunk of potential there. Tbh I spent very little to almost no time actually balancing the game haha. You could definitely still consider the game in "alpha" but I just wanted to get it out there to see if people liked it. I'm a bit mentally over working on it atm, but I could totally see me re-visiting the game a little while down the road and trying to make it something that really shines.
That makes sense! I wish you luck when you return to it and hope you get a good mental rest in the meantime 😆
Hi, I am a Korean gamer. Many Koreans love the game called Stackland. And I found this game has the potential to be as good as Stackland.
These are my suggestions:
1. I hope there is a boss monster like the devil that is powerful enough to make the player feel accomplished when they beat it. It would be a good idea to find it in a particular area while protecting a particular artifact or summon it through specific combinations.
2. In the game, I found there were many high-tech items such as cars, semiconductors, batteries, etc., but I was disappointed that they weren't much useful. The hospital was a good idea. It would be fun to use batteries and semiconductors to make a greenhouse or a factory that automatically produce food or something with no need of farmers.
3. Later, the inventory quickly fills up and the tiles are easily messed up with resources. I hope there's a way to organize this (ex. a building that can store some resources like the refrigerator, or the ability to scroll up and down the inventory)
4. I think it's a little too much to have three big tabs that give information on screen. It would be nice to be more simplified. (The biggest advantage of your game is its simplicity.)
5. There is a bug that cannot be pulled out when a knight or archer enters the house. (found in alpha v0.9)
The concept of this game is very good. If you keep adding more content to the game, it will be much greater. Keep it up!
So many good ideas! I love the additional content I could add as you suggested! :D
Thanks for playing!
I beat the game after the GameDev stream, and towards the end I was getting a little frustrated at trying to keep track of all of the things. I also realized that once someone uncovers copper, a chest, a boss, and oil, there isn't really a reason to explore further. For me, the satisfaction of having to search for a hidden secret or having an achievement of exploring everything is something I prefer, but I may just be a completionist like that. Good job on the game, and hope things go well for you.
So cool to see you played thru and beat the whole game up to its current point! Do you have any fun ideas that would make the end of the game exploration or some kind of achievement more satisfying to the user?
Sorry about the late reply, I don't hang out on itch very often. A couple ideas off the top of my head could be percentage of the island explored, which of course would make the completionist want to get to 100% and shouldn't be too hard to implement. The other thing that comes to mind right away would be something that can only be found at an edge of the island, perhaps one of the later game requirements, though that could backfire if someone has to search a long time to find. Thanks for the reply.
Sadly missing a Linux version...
I'll try to have one for the official release :D
I have to preface this by saying that I generally speaking don't play these kind of games and only played to help a fellow gamedev "get gud ";)
At any rate, to me it wasn't clear as to how to play this ... so the first thing I did was drag the resources I made into the little window on the right (I expected like a house unlock to appear) ... at least I thought I did ( as it apparently dragged it on a tile I couldn't see ...and one of my minions died ) and then I couldn't click on anything anymore .
And to me it is unclear how to actually build a house , I think it would be better if you just get a pop up once you have enough resources to build a house showing a house icon (which you can drag on teh map).
The music score is good though and I like the overall look and feel ... keep it up!
Thanks for the feedback! :D
I hate tutorials as much as the next guy, so I'll keep trying to make things as intuitive as possible. But out of curiosity was the tutorial unclear or was it snap-minimized to not bother reading it (which is fine I do that sometimes haha).
I didn't notice any instructions or tutorials tbh ... I basically played it by doing what felt natural or logical from my pov.,
So when the resources started stacking up I thought the lower right window was a container where I could get the building process for a house to start.
And I didn't get the toolbar you had in the demo with Rick and Tim (btw for multi-select you should have a click and hold mechanism , just lmb ).
Now from what I gathered, you don't want to spend months on this anymore, which is understandable.
So I won't bore you with more text, but I think that if you elect not to use a tutorial(or at least have it available) , then the UI experience should be a bit more polished I think .
But again I don't play games in this genre, closest thing is Civ6...but there (if I have time to play ...or just get sick of developing my own game -fixing effin bugs in king of crokinole) I never read or do the stat thing, I basically pick Alexander and take over the world through warfare ... and I don't know anyone who goes for the other victories ...and if they do, I am unsure if I really do want to know them :)
So maybe you need to take my words with a grain of salt , I just know that sometimes you're so deep into your game that you miss the bigger picture ...happened to me a lot of times and then it helps to get a complete outside view
Awsome work. I like it. Two things I think it COULD use is scrolling view with mouse and right click instead of shift... just so I would never have to use more then the mouse.
Agree! You can currently scroll by holding down the middle mouse button. Do you have another way you'd prefer to scroll with the mouse as well?
Oh no sorry I mean scrolling as in moving the camera around the map. Now you move the view with wasd. What I meant is if you add that when the mouse is near the edge you move the camera that way. Eks. Put the mouse to the top of the window would do same as w etc.
O oh gotcha. And yes, I think I'm unclear as well, you can indeed move the camera around the map with middle mouse button as well. Holding the middle mouse button down and dragging the map around. But I like your suggestion to also do the near edge movement which I can't think of any reason not just to have them all as options :D
Ah did not test that. Will try that next. Awsome game tho.
Fwiw I did add edge scrolling with the mouse this morning based on your feedback so ty ty :)
Ok, I managed to beat the game :D
It was really fun - I love this type of games. I do have few more comments: 1. I found no reason what so ever to create archers. 3 knights were sufficient enough to kill all the enemies anywhere, especially after building hospital.
2. I expected the fridge to be storage space rather than 'processing station'. As a result I destroyed all the food resources I had. I would suggest it processes food as other stations - with farmer or something. That way if somebody makes similar mistake they will not lose everything as I did.
3. This is really personal opinion - I am not saying it is correct or valid but... I feel the items like computer, car and circuit to be a little bit out of place. Everything else seemed to be more fantasy based.
4. I wish some crafting resources where more useful. In the sense that I produced milion bateries and milion graduation caps to use them in 1-2 receipies.
5. When the new resources spawn and my farmers get killed I would love to have a quick way to see where it happened. Maybe under the 'idle' button there could be another one for 'warning' or something like that and when you click it it takes you to important event place.
Besides that I really think you have done great job. The game seems very polished, I didn't encounter any bugs or anything like that. The pixelart is very cute and works very well. I cannot wait to see where you will take it next!
O hey! Sorry for the late response I was out of town until yesterday so I just saw this message! Thank you so much for playing and for the positive feedback. Means a lot to hear that people are enjoying it so far!
1. I have not discovered how I can kill my people if I need dead bodies. The only way I managed to get one dead body was by sending a farmer to a tile with enemy.
----
Ya that's it. Kinda just got to kamikaze someone if you need a body haha.
2. I would love to have a shortcut like SHIFT + Click or something that would automatically pick up the items from the ground and place them in the inventory.
There is! But a few people missed this in the tutorial and tool tips...So perhaps it should be more explicit somehow. It even is shift + click XD haha.
2. I expected the fridge to be storage space rather than 'processing station'. As a result I destroyed all the food resources I had. I would suggest it processes food as other stations - with farmer or something. That way if somebody makes similar mistake they will not lose everything as I did.
I'm not entierly sure what you mean so maybe I'm misunderstanding. But that's essentially what it is? You can take the food back out in the form of another food item and use it the same way to feed workers etc. But the alt sprite is a bit confusing.
---
I really like your other suggestions in #4 and #5 as well! Especially some kind of notification bar would help a lot! I think I have just the idea to implement that but it hadnt' crossed my mind until I read your comment, so thank you!
So cool to see the screen shot of you beating the game!
Hey, I have seen your game on the FB group. I love it. To be fair it's one of the most pleasant and relaxing games I have seen in a while. Over all everything seems to work great and the design is pretty clear. There are few minor things though:
1. I have not discovered how I can kill my people if I need dead bodies. The only way I managed to get one dead body was by sending a farmer to a tile with enemy.
2. I would love to have a shortcut like SHIFT + Click or something that would automatically pick up the items from the ground and place them in the inventory.
3. I missed a message about what the towers do during tutorial and it took me like 30-45min to discover that they are used to uncover the map. I was close to switching off the game because I couldn't figure it out :D.
Today I will be playing a bit more and maybe I will have more feedback :)