i think the gnome with the x blocked the way of research and i didnt get what i was supposed to do with the x so i pressed it but it gave me some confusion in any case
1. UI/presentation is overwhelming and underwhelimg at the same time. The amount and quality of frontloaded things to read and understand drags the momentum of the game and makes the beggining of the game feel like a grind. This occurs specially for the skill tree which, not only feels visually uninteresting, but also feels like it overexplains the upgrades while doesn't really making clear how they impact the game. I felt like I was just upgrading things not because of a conscius decision (because the game did not make clear enough how each upgrade translates into performance) but just because i got the money to buy it. All of these add many layers of friction that make it really difficut to get the fun of the game.
2. Most important feedback: The game doesn't feel exciting to play. Overcoming a benchmark should feel like an accomplishment but the game lacked any sense of joy or reward at that moment. And the moment to moment gameplay should build the tension until you succeed that benchmark but instead it just felt like a waiting game (which I know is weird feedback knowing that most idle games are just waiting games, but I will argue that the best idle games make the wait exciting with a lot of juice, feedback and sense of anticipation or urgency)
Suggestions: Maybe you should consider having more visual feedback on things like clockspeeds and temperature so, whenever you get an upgrade for any of them, you can see and feel the difference. An example I like of this is on nodebreakers when you get a speed or attack upgrade you reaaally feel in your hands the increase in productivity.
I second this. It's really hard to switch between the benchmarks and figure out what each benchmark provides (funding, telemetry) as there just isn't enough reward information provided, or even to swap between them because the tiny dropdown can't fit enough of the different options. It would feel much easier to select a benchmark in the tab and then click a button to "set as active benchmark" in the main tab.
I also didn't really feel a good sense of progression or what was coming next; it felt more like a proof of concept with random unlocks than actual gameplay. Apart from the benchmark rewards above, it feels like the unlocked research, components and prestige unlocks were very jumbled. Each loop didn't really feel that different to the last and I never felt like what I knew what I wanted to do next and nothing really felt natural. It felt like I was just testing the same designs slotting them in and out and I had no idea why I would keep doing that before progressing to the "current generation" chip.
Anyway -- I think the progression has to be really reworked a lot before the gameplay layers start to make sense. In a general sense, it feels like you should start off with a basic chip design each generation, and then you progress to making more and more advanced chips as the game progresses, until you reset. At the moment the player can kind of dump in whatever components you like as soon as the refresh completes and then apart from the research (which is not very visible of interactive), each refresh kind of feels a bit pointless. Or you try and dump everything in but then you need to run the basic benchmarks (with a low TDP) to restart the run and get the basic currency. So I'd like to propose that the player should be resetting component design each prestige; not the arbitrary research buffs. That type of reset would give a lot more meaning to the components, both as something interactive and as obvious milestones along the run to unlock, rather than upgrades hidden on the different shop tab.
I have actually thought for two literal hours of ways to improve the game because the concept of a microchip designer is such a fascinating topic: from restructuring the benchmarks into branches and forcing the player to pick a branch and make more frequent "chip prestiges" to swap between mobile/desktop designs; gameplay constraints like a limit on silicon wafers changing the amount of parts available per run, or restricting the grid size; changing the genre to a puzzle with roguelike-style random component offerings/unlocks per run; maybe even retheming to the business side with an idea of running an "efficient foundry" and introducing component costs to give a management flavour. There's a lot of potential and fun ideas connected to working at the chip companies, honestly the time flew by. But as the game currently is, it's just a cool way to try tinkering and making chips and making the number go (randomly) up. Sadly the gameplay loop and currencies/prestiges just don't really connect to the idle genre or anything with deeper meaning yet.
I liked this game more than MMO98. Some early feedback so far:
1. There is too much stuff on the screen instantly when the game starts + Gnorman talks with long paragraphs, that might scare many tiktok-brained younglings
2. Too many abbreviations for a regular player, may be make tooltips for each one? That doesn't matter for the gameplay, but might add to confusion.
3. The prestige tree uses telemetry similarly to the normal tree, which is not ideal, this way there is a conflict between the 2 and choosing between them is annoying. I would suggest making the normal tree be "spendable telemetry" and the prestige tree "accumulated (current + spended) telemetry for the current socket" or just add another resource for simplicity
4. The music is too active, some more chill synthwave or something would do better, but thats a taste thing
The browser doesn't save the progression, every time I update the page it starts from the beginning.
Regarding other players comments about benchmarks taking too long: you can give them levels and highlight it, this way it will be more clear and understandable that a level 1 benchmark takes a couple seconds and a level 8 benchmark takes a minute or doesnt even finish if you have too few upgrades.
nice idea, though the waiting for benchmark is a bit long. The visual choice is cool, but makes it VERY obnoxious to try and read any text descriptions
Hey, thanks for the feedback, the benchmarks are kind of in that weird spot of too short for idler, too long for "active" play, which is also why I'm doing the playtest to figure out what direction to go.
What would you give as an example for obnoxious to read? Font sizes too small? Low contrast? Something else?
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LOVE TS
i think the gnome with the x blocked the way of research and i didnt get what i was supposed to do with the x so i pressed it but it gave me some confusion in any case
jesus christ the sound design in this game is aweful, you could not have picked more annoying music and sound effects
Really nice idea, not that well executed:
1. UI/presentation is overwhelming and underwhelimg at the same time. The amount and quality of frontloaded things to read and understand drags the momentum of the game and makes the beggining of the game feel like a grind. This occurs specially for the skill tree which, not only feels visually uninteresting, but also feels like it overexplains the upgrades while doesn't really making clear how they impact the game. I felt like I was just upgrading things not because of a conscius decision (because the game did not make clear enough how each upgrade translates into performance) but just because i got the money to buy it. All of these add many layers of friction that make it really difficut to get the fun of the game.
2. Most important feedback: The game doesn't feel exciting to play. Overcoming a benchmark should feel like an accomplishment but the game lacked any sense of joy or reward at that moment. And the moment to moment gameplay should build the tension until you succeed that benchmark but instead it just felt like a waiting game (which I know is weird feedback knowing that most idle games are just waiting games, but I will argue that the best idle games make the wait exciting with a lot of juice, feedback and sense of anticipation or urgency)
Suggestions: Maybe you should consider having more visual feedback on things like clockspeeds and temperature so, whenever you get an upgrade for any of them, you can see and feel the difference. An example I like of this is on nodebreakers when you get a speed or attack upgrade you reaaally feel in your hands the increase in productivity.
I second this. It's really hard to switch between the benchmarks and figure out what each benchmark provides (funding, telemetry) as there just isn't enough reward information provided, or even to swap between them because the tiny dropdown can't fit enough of the different options. It would feel much easier to select a benchmark in the tab and then click a button to "set as active benchmark" in the main tab.
I also didn't really feel a good sense of progression or what was coming next; it felt more like a proof of concept with random unlocks than actual gameplay. Apart from the benchmark rewards above, it feels like the unlocked research, components and prestige unlocks were very jumbled. Each loop didn't really feel that different to the last and I never felt like what I knew what I wanted to do next and nothing really felt natural. It felt like I was just testing the same designs slotting them in and out and I had no idea why I would keep doing that before progressing to the "current generation" chip.
Anyway -- I think the progression has to be really reworked a lot before the gameplay layers start to make sense. In a general sense, it feels like you should start off with a basic chip design each generation, and then you progress to making more and more advanced chips as the game progresses, until you reset. At the moment the player can kind of dump in whatever components you like as soon as the refresh completes and then apart from the research (which is not very visible of interactive), each refresh kind of feels a bit pointless. Or you try and dump everything in but then you need to run the basic benchmarks (with a low TDP) to restart the run and get the basic currency. So I'd like to propose that the player should be resetting component design each prestige; not the arbitrary research buffs. That type of reset would give a lot more meaning to the components, both as something interactive and as obvious milestones along the run to unlock, rather than upgrades hidden on the different shop tab.
I have actually thought for two literal hours of ways to improve the game because the concept of a microchip designer is such a fascinating topic: from restructuring the benchmarks into branches and forcing the player to pick a branch and make more frequent "chip prestiges" to swap between mobile/desktop designs; gameplay constraints like a limit on silicon wafers changing the amount of parts available per run, or restricting the grid size; changing the genre to a puzzle with roguelike-style random component offerings/unlocks per run; maybe even retheming to the business side with an idea of running an "efficient foundry" and introducing component costs to give a management flavour. There's a lot of potential and fun ideas connected to working at the chip companies, honestly the time flew by. But as the game currently is, it's just a cool way to try tinkering and making chips and making the number go (randomly) up. Sadly the gameplay loop and currencies/prestiges just don't really connect to the idle genre or anything with deeper meaning yet.
I liked this game more than MMO98. Some early feedback so far:
1. There is too much stuff on the screen instantly when the game starts + Gnorman talks with long paragraphs, that might scare many tiktok-brained younglings
2. Too many abbreviations for a regular player, may be make tooltips for each one? That doesn't matter for the gameplay, but might add to confusion.
3. The prestige tree uses telemetry similarly to the normal tree, which is not ideal, this way there is a conflict between the 2 and choosing between them is annoying. I would suggest making the normal tree be "spendable telemetry" and the prestige tree "accumulated (current + spended) telemetry for the current socket" or just add another resource for simplicity
4. The music is too active, some more chill synthwave or something would do better, but thats a taste thing
Also when Gnorman finishes a segment of the tuturial, instead of dissappearing, he stays there until you click X. That looks like a bug.
The browser doesn't save the progression, every time I update the page it starts from the beginning.
Regarding other players comments about benchmarks taking too long: you can give them levels and highlight it, this way it will be more clear and understandable that a level 1 benchmark takes a couple seconds and a level 8 benchmark takes a minute or doesnt even finish if you have too few upgrades.
Love the idea but the waiting for benchmarking is a bit long in my opinion. Also cool discord server
research trees are not clear for me, also why test is not stopping when it fails?
Benchmarks are supposed to fail. Each failed benchmark still provides you with telemetry, which you can use to upgrade, and get better runs.
They should be run continuously, until you've upgraded your CPU enough that they pass. They are not supposed to be one-shotted.
You use the telemetry gained from each run, to upgrade your components in the research tree.
nice idea, though the waiting for benchmark is a bit long. The visual choice is cool, but makes it VERY obnoxious to try and read any text descriptions
Hey, thanks for the feedback, the benchmarks are kind of in that weird spot of too short for idler, too long for "active" play, which is also why I'm doing the playtest to figure out what direction to go.
What would you give as an example for obnoxious to read? Font sizes too small? Low contrast? Something else?
Nice idea,
The wait for benchmarks feels too long, specially without something to do like clicking.
Gnorman is not doing a good job explaining the main loops. Didn't understand what "Release New Socket" meant.
The font is small and the scanlines makes it less clear, specially that fullscreen button is not actually working (the game has fixed size)
I'd be looking to adding some more active tabs in the later stages of the game, and also splitting up benchmarks more in "short" and idler ones.
I can look at changing the font size. It shouldn't be fixed size, only fixed aspect ratio. Are you referring to the itch.io browser fullscreen button?
Yes, itch.io button results in a game with the same size, just with black padding around it
This looks interesting, idk about UI style