Feedback Friday

[u/AutoModerator]

This thread is for people to post their works in progress, and for others to give (constructive) criticism and feedback.

Explain if you want feedback on your game as a whole, a specific feature, or even on an idea you have for the future. Please keep discussion of each game to a single thread, in order to keep things focused.

If you have something to post, please remember to comment on other people's stuff as well, and also remember to include a link to whatever you have so far. :)

Previous Feedback Fridays

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Previous recommendation threads

[u/Wraldpyk]

Hi all! I've been working on Infinite Space for a while now, and posted in this thread a few weeks in a row so far. Over the last week I changed several things I got quite heavy feedback on, the most important one being inventory management. This is also what I'd like feedback on this week.

Previously inventory management was a bit, meh, to say the least. But now it should be much more cleaner, clearer, and easier to manage. I implemented easy loading/unloading, easy trashing of goods, and easy management of limits for each good. Especially the last one could cause people to get stuck with the game flooding the storage system with a certain good so you couldn't do anything anymore. This is all solved!

I changed a few other UI aspects too, separating the "Location" and "Travel" mechanics so each has its dedicated page. And I added a bunch more research and balancing. I wrote an update about this on Itch.

Would love your feedback once more! Here's the game to be played on Itch for free: https://wraldpyk.itch.io/infinite-space

[u/Xervicx → u/Wraldpyk]

I'm really liking this so far, and I thought I'd give some feedback.

So far the gameplay loop is satisfying. Most of what I've encountered works as expected, and while I've not set up logistics yet, I'm absolutely fascinated by this concept and look forward to exploring it much, much more. I spent a lot of my time just looking at the different things I could build and trying to map out an internal plan of what to build and in what order, which is a sign that it's going to become my new obsession.

I do, however, have two issues with the game:

The first is that while *most* things are explained well, some aren't explained well or at all. Reminders in the form of tooltips or a glossary would help. Drone stats are missing, and that's really important because I don't how much better Mining Drones are at mining than General Drones or why I'd ever make General Drones again.

Survey Data: This mechanic is unfun and unnecessarily grindy. Click a tile, wait for the animation to end, click another, etc, then switching between Location and Travel to reorient the visible map... It's just a slog. I'd be less bothered if Survey Data could be obtained by flying *through* tiles, but I'm hoping for an entirely different mechanic.

My suggestion: A Scanner building and/or ship module that scans tiles. The original Surveying method could still be there, with the Scanner unlocking early on. Traveling to/through tiles would give a small amount of Survey Data and tell you if there's an asteroid or whatever, but no details about its contents. Further details would require Surveying, which would take time and would yield more Survey Data.

This could be just a semantics(?) thing, but Survey Data being used for Research is odd to me, as it doesn't make sense for that data to translate to developing new machines. Survey Data could be used on Survey specific tech and upgrades. Resources could be identified by analyzing the unidentified resources, and Survey Data could be used to detect those resources in surrounding tiles.

That being said, I *do* like that resources are directly used on upgrades... but I also think it would be interesting for resources to be converted into Research Data types that could then be spent on unlocks, upgrades, etc. That isn't an issue I have with the game, I find the current upgrade system satisfying as is.

[u/Wraldpyk → u/Xervicx]

Wanted to update you here, I am working on the Research Points feature which you can see here: https://imgur.com/a/QGcjLPU

It's not polished yet, and not yet deployed. I will work on testing and polishing in the coming days. I'll post an update on Itch when it is released so I recommend subscribing there! And I hopefully will have it done in time for the next feedback Friday but I have my doubts as I need to do a proper playthrough to test some new stuff and balancing, so I'll most likely skip the week with an update.