The day timer ticks up while you're reading the introduction and viewing controls. And there's no option to restart the game except by reloading the page.
Why is the start menu mouse-based when the rest of the game is keyboard-based? Since you already have a tutorial on this screen where you can move a character and pick up items, you should integrate that into the main menu. The player should start the game by making the character pick up a bomb labeled "Start", or view Credits by making the character pick up an item labeled "Credits".
That's a good suggestion! I had that though when I was making it, but couldnt quite get it to work out. I might look into that for a future update though, thanks for playing!
Controls are a bit clunky. When you step on a portal switch, you can't make another move until you flail the cursor around a bit. Also, if you click an empty tile and both Pons are adjacent to it, it picks a Pon at random to walk into the tile.
In the second zone, there are stacks of plates which translate to a four-digit code, 3142. There are two places you can enter 3142, and both are equally likely because there's no visual association between the plates and the correct place to enter the code. This is so low-effort it's not even funny. 1 star.
This game should do the thing NGU does, where each time you reach some milestone you unlock more story. But instead of an excuse plot, you unlock lessons for introducing beginners to the wonderful world of set theory.
@Joe83: Not a bug. Reincarnation resets even more things than Prestige, including challenges. Later upgrades will make the challenge reset practically moot. In the meantime, go to the Settings menu and turn on re-enter successfully completed challenges.
I do plan on adding a slower mode and perhaps a pause to give some players more time. I will say that the idea behind this game is to have basically nothing but loot selection as the player's actions. That's why it really starts to ramp up, because this game is designed to test your ability to make quick and smart decisions on the fly and in a limited time so it's really central to the design. Thanks for playing and commenting :)
It seems like once you get married, you can completely neglect maintaining a relationship with your wife so you can focus entirely on work. That's awfully depressing.
What's with the music? I feel like I'm watching an ad by some soulless corporation talking about all the "inspiring" ways they're "shaping the future".
Not letting a player preview the whole stage first, and then throwing a hazard you have to turn off right after the screen scroll boundary is such a dick move.
Also, if you carry an item, get infected, put it down, wash your hands, and pick it back up again, you don't get infected. Apparently contamination doesn't spread to items you're holding, which is definitely not correct.
The rules seem to change arbitrarily. On some levels, washing your hands wastes the item you're holding, while on other levels you keep the item. And on Level 16, when you swap the matches for the bread and then wash your hands with the bread, the bread is lost but you somehow telekinetically swap it out for the matches, even if you're nowhere near them.
Nine years old or not, this game probably holds a record for most bad design decisions ever crammed into a game. When you attack, sometimes you can't attack at full power because the timing bar is just a sliver wide. If you try to heal with a potion when you've taken 201 damage, you automatically use an expensive 500 HP potion instead, which is a ridiculous waste. Or you may make the reasonable decision to hold off on healing while you're at 80% health, and the enemy randomly uses a spell that knocks you down to 5%, before finishing you off. Not to mention all the forced grinding you have to do just to even stand a shot at surviving the boss battles.
Thanks for commenting, I'll keep that in mind.