Oh, as an addendum, a "repeat" function would be nice. I understand the limitation for Cube building (although 15 is way too low when I'm trying to build hundreds early on), which is another function that becomes obsolete anyway. But if I'm going to have to Explore the same area 10 times to clear the enemies, let me auto-repeat the exploration, please. I can't multi-task if I have to switch back every 4 minutes to press "again."
I know it's in Beta, so things are going to change, but there are a few things that really need some more work. Clicking for the Energy or Metal becomes obsolete after 2-3 resets, and never generates enough to matter. One you get 100k Metal/sec, you never need to click the manual mine again. And Exploring is neat, but as far as I can tell, there's no real way to improve Damage output, so the player gets stuck at area 6 or 7. Which means no materials for Hangers, so that's a forced reset. Overall, it plays well, you just need to improve and add to it.
Loved the final trick with the last tool. I used it by clicking random objects but after seeing how it was needed for the door, it made perfect sense. Not often that that puzzle games get the "oh!!!" factor down, but that was really neat. :D
It was okay. It really felt like each level was dependent on when you get the power-ups you need. The only level I took more than 1-2 tries was level 4, which I'm not sure is possible unless you get a 2xCoin boost. Otherwise, I didn't struggle at all, and beat the game in under an hour (even counting the 15 minutes required for survival). Might be worth considering how powerups balance out the game. One last note on a glitch: I missed the Destroyer 4 achievement. Somehow it stopped counting my asteroid count at 3754/5000 and moved on to the next achievement. Best guess is that I jumped from 3754 to 7500 in a single level, so I was only awarded the 7500 achievement, with no way to go back and get the previous level.
Hi, thanks for playing. The game can be completed in less than 1 hour :) Thanks for the report of the achievement, I will check what may have happened.
Also, for level 24, a hint is that there is only one "dead end" where you cannot return from getting a chest. So as long as this is your last chest, you won't need the checkpoint for any other path. And there is a small glitch that can help or hurt you - if you open a chest before the spike animation finishes rotating, it will skip the animation for that action. So if you quickly can "move-move-open" a chest, the spikes will only change twice, going from safe > armed > up. This is not required for the level, but it can leave you stranded, so to avoid that just press the arrow keys a bit slower.
Thank you for your kind feedback!)) We have prepared 66 levels in the full version of the game. New monsters, new adventures, map and new smart moves are waiting for you! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1209520/Smart_Moves
For anyone else stuck on Level 22, I don't want to spoil the puzzle for everyone, so I'll write the first half of the solution. Press these keys in order: Down x4, Up x2, Right, Up, Down, Up, Right, Up. This clears the first wave. Then press Up x5, Down x2, Up, Down, Up... Pay attention to how the enemies moved for those last few commands, and the rest of the level should come together.
Thank you for your kind feedback!)) We have prepared 66 levels in the full version of the game. New monsters, new adventures, map and new smart moves are waiting for you!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1209520/Smart_Moves
Level 22 is REALLY unintuitive, and really the only "difficult" level. There's no checkpoints, so the level is designed for you to lure the enemies in, but nothing about the level tells you HOW to lure them. The chests seem important because they can be used to burn a turn, but in this case they are useless and should have been placed behind ALL the enemies, so the player doesn't think "I should go for them." Really, the level comes down to binary thinking and recognizing how enemies interact when they want to move to an occupied space, but nothing in the game has reinforced these techniques.
Thank you for your kind feedback!)) We have prepared 66 levels in the full version of the game. New monsters, new adventures, map and new smart moves are waiting for you! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1209520/Smart_Moves
Impossible Badge Tips: 1) You can beat the first 3 levels in 1-2 turns, no damage. Restart if it takes over 7 total or you get hit. 2) Restart if you miss a diamond on any level. 3) Cantrips are both offensive and defensive, far more valuable than any other upgrade. Perfect runs could get 6-7 extra Cantrips, but you also NEED Shields. So aim for Cantrips first, and buy Shields and extra Hearts with any leftover gold. 4) Buying a heart after level 5 provides another heart in the last shop. GAUNTLET TIPS: 5) This is about survival, NOT speed. Prioritize safety over kills; don't take more than one damage per level. 6) Aim for the Nimble enemies first, and note that the Champion hits the whole field (why you need Shields). 7) Break the Blight Matrons against a wall - this will reduce the number of spawns, which reduces Blight. 8) Higher Gauntlet level = more starting blight, so you'll have to plan moves in advance. 9) Pray to RNG Jesus, because he can kill a run at any moment. Good Luck!
A solid game with an interesting balance and theme. My biggest complaint is being forced to navigate the UI. There's really no reason for not having the option to click a card, then click the desired location. Navigating the shop is particularly annoying because it would proceed much faster if you could just select the upgrades you wanted. Also, collecting the diamonds is another unnecessary step; just add them to the total, why even chance that a player would miss collecting them? These two things more than double the length of a run, which seems to be their only purpose. [Unless they are intended for the mobile format, which is a different vein of annoyance.]
For Badge Hunters, I'll repeat what others have suggested: Once you figure out the base leveling mechanics, you'll be stuck unless you use a good team. Leveling random units is worthless. Your set-up should be Healer-Healer-DPS-Tank-Tank. Your middle DPS should be the shop Legendary unit for 150 gems, with any attack traits you can give it (check the player guide in-game for trait details). Your two Healers should be Toads with Healing Aura or Optimized Heal (I did one of each). Your Tanks MUST be Manticores, they are by far the best tank, but also a rough grind to get. Give them Vampire and Rage if you can. You can swap the middle Tank for another Epic DPS if you want; I used Sphinx. That should be enough to get past stage 56 with levels 50-50-25-25-25 or so. Also, don't waste gems on the gacha machines - it's way too random to be reliable, better to save up for timeskips or a second legendary.
The real problem to the game is that there's just not much to it, despite the complex menus. You almost never unlock anything on your own merit - the majority of it is gacha-based, which is either p2w or a lot of time and luck, both of which are boring. The gameplay is less about playing and more about strategizing, but you are so limited early on that only a couple strategies are worth using. Because playing randomly or testing provides almost no progress or feedback, people are more likely to check comments/forums for the min/max dominant strategy, then grind for that, which will reveal just how dull the game is. The fact that progress is greater offline than online proves this point further. It's not a game players will stick with.
I have to agree that progress stops quite abruptly at Ch.14. There's a lot of great unique things about this game, and it's very fun, but here's why people are mad: Suicide Points are diminishing, and literally every other means of progress requires Bucks to be useful. And many would-be useful ways of getting bucks (spins and achievements) are only available in the endgame. The balance MUST be worked around how a player engages, not around how useful the cash currency is. It may be true that on whole, the game offers everything for free and is fair, but the player experience is absolutely going to be a series of cash-demanding walls. Play this game from scratch as a Player instead of a Dev (no mods/cheats/debug), and after about eight enjoyable hours you'll hit the wall and understand what people are saying.
(2/2) Constructive criticism aside, it's very obvious this is intended to be an ad-based and purchase-based idle game, and that this "beta" is a test of simple systems before it gets ported to mobile. The scrolling UI is one direct sign it's meant for mobile. The fact that the Kreds shop (a third of the whole game) is more functional and complete than anything else in the game is absolutely appalling. [You even have a bundle offer?!] I have to agree with the other users who are not a fan of this, because the money-milking is obvious. It's one thing to provide an unpolished game for beta users and later for Kongregate in general - it's another to just be looking out for how to make the most money. Despite your friendly comments, your intentions are very clear. And I would rather spend my money on a hard-working, passionate developer who wants to give me a good experience, instead of one who puts out garbage because they are just looking for ad sponsors and people with loose wallets.
This is a shell of an alpha, and what little it has is all wrong. Lootbox progression of Rarity Tiers isn't ideal for idle games - since you only use 5 units at a time, a green unit will eventually be worthless when you get 5 blues or better. Greens take more currency and duplicates to upgrade to the strength of blues, so it's also worthless to upgrade them. This is frustrating in general. Outside units, the building scaling is all wrong - diminishing returns of Rank Ups combined with exponentially more costly upgrades means you'll always hit early walls. Even though completing a zone gives a nice boost, the game will only be hitting walls and waiting. Lastly, the one thing to do in the game (clicking) feels nice, but it ends up being far too weak. For me, with 4x clicking power I'm at 1G per click, but my auto per second is 23.5G. Unless I use an autoclicker it's better to just stay offline, but eventually (and quickly) the walls will take weeks to hit, which is just a dead idle game.
helium4eva is right - remember that you can bounce down to make the ghosts go invisible. So use the first bat for height, bounce down to make the ghost disappear, then use the second bat to go across. Way easier than the video that greg posted / what others are saying to do.
As a general gameplay complaint, the audio/visual needs a bit of work. Around when you get a full deck for the first time, the game picks up a lot of speed. The air horn sounds and the shake and flashes for rarer combos start to get annoying and painful to view, even as background noise/vision. They are even more annoying while I'm navigating the game menus. There's no way to adjust or turn of these specific elements, so the overall experience suffers.
So, in the current game, there's a hard cap once you hit QuinquaVigintillion, around 1700 of each business. Once you get 10 QQV, you're out of upgrades until NovemVigintillion, which is four tiers up, and it's just a 3x boost. And while you do get some gains from 1700 > 2000 buildings (a total of 64x), after that it slows down immensely since it goes from every 100 to every 250 levels. The only real way to progress was to farm Brain Power, which I believe has been drastically reduced (like 90% less gained) in the most recent update. So until there's more content, players will get stuck around this point.
Yeah, it's a pretty fun game, with several improvements on the Crush Crush formula, but the current lootbox system is flawed. After reaching Rank 8, the game stalls until you can get more cats for more achievements. And after three baskets and no new cats, Sugar accumulation is too slow to keep me playing. I'm eagerly awaiting updates, but for now I'm stuck with only the option to loop the same cats for the same taiyaki forever.
We're currently in the process of giving the loot system an update, so thanks for the feedback. And thanks also for the progression critique - this is actually something we'll be addressing with new systems, to help expand the game's experience. We also plan to add more Kitties over time - we just need to smooth over some obvious rough edges first. Thanks again for your feedback!
Finally hit Tier 1024. It's an interesting concept to use hexidecimal colors, but... The game was fun in the beginning, slowed at 700, and straight boring past 1000. The double click function should be automated, 3 seconds is much too long for a tick cap, and all of the upgrades give diminishing returns. You basically are forced to reset every 100 tiers, but it takes longer and longer to get back to your reset point. Overall, it needs to be reworked to make the progress feel more enjoyable.
It's a well made game, and I love the humor and satire. However, my experience was that in under 24 hours of runtime, I got 100% completion, 15/15 equips for each gameplay, and maxed out the costs for every lootbox option. I'm now level 123 (and rising) with 1200 credit cards to spare, so I'm marking this version complete. I look forward to updates for the game, but I'm afraid you may have made this one too easy for now.
 "Happy Cube Idle"){kind=icon}
 "Escape Game - Computer Office Escape"){kind=icon}
 "GOSPACE"){kind=icon}
 "Smart Moves Alpha"){kind=icon}
 "Pawnbarian"){kind=icon}
 "Idle Monster Frontier"){kind=icon}
 "SuicIDLE"){kind=icon}
 "Fist Of Furry"){kind=icon}
 "Greedy Mimic"){kind=icon}
 "Idle Dice"){kind=icon}
 "Idle Space Tycoon"){kind=icon}
 "Kitty Catsanova"){kind=icon}
 "Hex color idle"){kind=icon}
 "Moczan's Lootbox Game"){kind=icon}
Hi, thanks for playing. The game can be completed in less than 1 hour :) Thanks for the report of the achievement, I will check what may have happened.