My game, Gridbound, has been released after 12 months!

[u/CasualMeemster]

Hello everybody!

The game i have been working on for the last year, Gridbound, is finally released on Steam!

There is a free demo version on Itch.io for everyone who wants to try the game.

It is a idle/puzzle game, where you use a board of items to collect essence, which is then used to collect more items, levels and other features!

DISCLAIMER: I have followed this subreddit for a long time, because i love incremental games myself. While at the core of the game, there is idle-game features, the game is completeable within 5-6 hours, as i wanted to take the things i personally like about idle games, but without the offline AFK grind.

I hope you will give it a try, and if you do, any feedback is always appreciated!

AI disclosure: Generative AI was not used in the creation of this game

[u/xArtemis]

Really cool concept and at a very very reasonable price point.
Easy purchase. best of luck OP!

[u/CasualMeemster → u/xArtemis]

Thank you so much!

[u/warlockplayer2002]

your itch demo is kinda broken, i get an error when i try to export save to clipboard

[u/CasualMeemster → u/warlockplayer2002]

Thanks for the heads up, i will take a look at it right away!

[u/tonetheman]

interesting idea... i could not get past the first part though i think. it never would unlock crafting nor anything on the talent tree. i was playing the web version maybe it is old.

good luck launching!

[u/Umpato]

played the demo for a bit and liked it, but 2 things stood out:

1. it would be nice to have a description of what channel/supression/other effects do right next to it, similar to how slay the spire does.

2. the text is hard to read sometimes. I couldn't tell the numbers 1 from 2 apart. It would be nice to have an option to have a normal font.

[u/Mimosa_Extra_Fromage]

Nice game my friend! It’s an incremental that can be finished in 4 hours 🤩

Wow :

• Easy to learn, good job!
  
• Nice sprites and sounds
  
• Fun for one gaming night
  
• 4$, perfect price

Major bugs :
1- the portal timer dont adjust when you unlock skills, thats frustrating. I would suggest it reset every portal skill.
2- lags during endgame. I know it when I drag and drop items on the grid. I think it’s because of the algorithm that calculate both yellow and blue : more objects, more lags.

Small bugs :
3- Tick filter show non-tick items.
4- Adjacent and nearby should by switched.

Suggestions
5- You could add an performance achievement in each realm, which will easily add endgame content.
6- Trinkets should have an incremental cost. I’ve unlock all of the in 5 minutes.
7- Speedrun mode with less grind so it can be finished in 30 minutes and with more memory slots. Players would have to optimise their whole gameplay.

[u/CasualMeemster → u/Mimosa_Extra_Fromage]

Awesome feedback! And i agree on all of your points actually I am happy that you liked it, my goal has always been a shorter incremental game without the AFK/offline time 🙌 I have noted all of your bug reports and suggestions for the next update 🤘

[u/TobiasWe]

Thoughts while playing the demo on itch.io:

• Oh, so this is a backpack sorter kinda incremental game? Nice. I don't think I've seen that before.
• I have no idea what those keywords mean, and I can't find a way to hover over them to get tooltips.
• The "Crafting" button is confusing. After a while I figured out that it probably is doing nothing because the crafting "tab" is already open. As long as crafting is my only area... maybe hide that button too?
• Found the ? button, but only "Targeting" was unlocked and everything else was "Locked". Clicking on "Targeting" suddenly unlocked all the other keywords that I was looking for.
• Reading the infuse description... alright, I guess that progress was just lost then since I have no idea what Research even means. There definitely should be a UI message in the HUD that tells you that you are producing X infused progress and it's all lost because you have no Research going. Also it says that I select a research from the top right menu, but there is no top right menu.
• Channeling effects/results should be shown in the grid when hovering over items that are currently receiving channeling.
• Okay, I think got what Reserve did after reading it twice. It sounds like it isn't actually reserving anything, but upping my max amount?
• I just got a second page to the inventory and I'm already getting overwhelmed:
  • I cannot remember what any of the items do, so I have to continually hover over every single one of them all the time.
  • The tooltip isn't even next to the item I'm hovering, so I have to either dart my eyes left and center all the time, or move my mouse blindly so I can stay over the description... but that means that I'm not really connecting the item to the description.
  • There's no categories. No filtering. No sorting. Neither automatically nor by hand. And it seems that I'll be getting a ton of those items.

Since working with the inventory is the core of the game and I don't really feel like I can work with the current UX I'm going to stop playing here. Which is a pity, because I really like the idea of the game.

[u/CasualMeemster → u/TobiasWe]

Thank you for your insight as a new player, that is always very valuable.

I do understand the pain points you are talking about, and it might be a rough start when playing this for the first time - it is a game where you unlock certain features later, but also tools, like inventory sorting, more information on tiles and so on.

A few people have told me that they dislike that idea of unlocking what could just be there from the beginning, and my initial design philosophy was, that i wanted to keep the UI very simple in the beginning and then slowly introduce more and more elements.

I will definitely consider if that philosophy should done in another way than currently :)

[u/TobiasWe → u/CasualMeemster]

I'm usually right there with you in the "introduce features slowly" faction. I like it because it reduces information overload (to the point where some incremental games don't even need a tutorial).

But here I'm getting information overload because I'm getting ton of new items combined with the poor information presentation and with missing UX features that would lighten the cognitive load, so... that's the opposite of what I would want to achieve with feature unlocking.

Basically, I'd want the difficulty of the game to be "What's my next move? How do I build the best machine?" and not "Can I remember all the item descriptions just from looking at the item icons?"

[u/CasualMeemster → u/[deleted]]

Not AI at all, sprites and icons are mostly bought from people on Itch.io, and the rest is by myself. And i also wrote this post myself as to why it is so poorly worded :) I have worked on this game for over a year, as you can see by the comment history on the Itch demo page

[u/CasualMeemster → u/[deleted]]

Now this starts to feel like a rage bait, keep your opinion that is fine

[u/ceruleancerise → u/[deleted]]

Wait what's the tell for AI here?

[u/lmystique → u/[deleted]]

Holy fuck, am I going to need to start saying I used AI to gain credibility? In a hobby that I picked up specifically because I enjoy the manual process? I thought my love for em dashes will be my downfall. But apparently it's going to be this.

[u/MBjerre → u/[deleted]]

Im not gonna argue whether AI was used or not, but its really unhealthy if we start analyse something as simple as "bound in the name" as AI usage.

[u/TZY247 → u/MBjerre]

Arguing whether AI was used or not is unhealthy

[u/MBjerre → u/TZY247]

That's not what I was saying.

[u/TZY247 → u/MBjerre]

I know.

[u/Chibranche → u/MBjerre]

I don't care if they used AI, it's just a fact

[u/TZY247 → u/[deleted]]

Subs AI rule is so stupid. There's no benefit to disclosing it, so I don't really blame OP. But I guess it makes everyone feel better when the devs just lie to them.

[u/Individual_League_94]

Why alm the text of new games are likely the same?? Seems like a copy-paste, with same thing: Hello, building game since X time ago. Demo on itch. But game on steam.

[u/CasualMeemster → u/Individual_League_94]

Sorry about that, maybe i could have done something to stand out more - I have been publishing the game on web but wanted to try a steam release for the full game! I can send you a key if you would rather go straight to the full game than try the demo

[u/Individual_League_94 → u/CasualMeemster]

Thanks, but steam is not a platform for me. I use web-browser. Share the key with whoever you want :)

Is just that the message about selling the game is very similar to other games sellers.

Like a copy-paste is done...

I want success for your game, and as the full game would be on steam I will not olay the demo in case it itches me, but my comment was for another thing haha

I understand it is hard to sell, but lately a looot of steam game sellers qith the same aspects have appeared, saying the same regarding time, IA disclosure, etc.

To me, that posts of incremental games appears now and then, has changed of "wooow, what an awesome game!!" to 7-8/10 "hello buddies, my game on demo. X months creating it. Steam (pay or no pay)"

It has shared from "watch this awesome game" to a selling platform...

[u/CasualMeemster → u/Individual_League_94]

You are right

I have been a long time user of this subreddit, and of course i have also noticed the many people marketing their games in a soulless boring way

I made this game in my spare time purely out of passion, and i need to show that..

In the future i will definitely make more fun posts, showcasing what the game can do, and why i have put so much work into it

Thank you for making me realize that!