Gameplay and Critique ;)
First of all, thank you very much for taking the time playing, analyzing and reviewing my game. Your feedback is incredibly useful. I watched your video and wrote an A4 paper on what to improve.
One thing I have to think about a little bit. When there is no timer, there is no way to lose the game anymore. I'm thinking about if this is a bad thing, because the game loses its "challenge" aspect through this.
It seems to me you have a lot of knowledge about game design, do you work something in this direction? I hope if you come back in a few weeks I have changed the way the game works to make it feel more fun.
That's a very interesting question.
My first thought is... is 'losing' the game really necessary? You've set a challenge, the player must work their way through the obstacles to complete the challenge... losing is just an occasional forced reset. Other than extending game play time, I don't really see the value.
Of course, the intention behind losing is consequence, and defeating the consequence brings dopamine.
Perhaps instead of a hard time limit to force a restart, there is a soft time limit for certain goals? You still 'win' the round if you achieve the basic goal, but there are timed advanced goals that give you a rating out of stars or something?
I have thought about this for a bit longer. How can I keep the game function time-based (as it is a simulation game) while not stressing the player and forcing decisions? I found a hybrid solution for this. When you place a tile, the timer is paused. In this way, the strategic playing remains, as the player can take time on the decisions, while also the challenge of combining tiles cleverly persists. I have already gametested this a bit and I think it improves the game experience. There are also a few other advantages: This doesn't complicate the game further, as it is complicted enough. I don't have to change much of the code.
I thought about this for a bit. How can I make my game be based on decision-based difficulty instead of stress-based difficulty? So one way would be to make the game turn-based. You get X tiles to place before the round goal has to be reached. The problem with this is that the game itself is time-based, as resources are produced over time. One idea would be to stop the time at some limit. This limit increases by a few seconds for each tile placed. This way, the game function can remain time-based, while there is no stress factor anymore, and a challenge still remains. I still have to develop this idea further, if you have any thoughts on this let me know.
Hey Fort, remember me and this game? I have worked on it hard, and my steam page is now online! Maybe you want to try it again some time. https://store.steampowered.com/app/4165740/Vena/