Waaaayyyyy toooooo loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong!
Nuff said. A time management game like this should be completeable in lesxs than 4 hours (heck, 2 hours!). Fixes: Require only 3 stars, not 5, for a client to become copper then silver then gold. Make new clients appear 50% more often. Make dessert badges require 20 not 30 desserts etc... It is OBVIOUS that the game designers didn't playtest the game themselves, since playing it fully require a good 8+ hurs of play ARG! Becomes *_extremely_* repetitive (and thus boring) after a couple hours. SHORTEN IT BY MORE THAN HALF!
When a platformer makes you dire more often from the environment on split-second pixel-precision missed jumps, rather than because of the so-easy to kill monsters, you know there is something extremely wrong in the basic design. Apart from that constant frustration, its a great game with a cool feeling.
SPOILER: The ending arrives suddenly and without warning: After killing the last monster on the last level, we win - the main villain escapes and we can't even fight him! ARG!
Great game. To improve: Not enough color contrast between passable/impassable squares. Especially true in underground and ice levels. No visual difference between a black hole in ground causing death vs leading somewhere. Incomplete level design: you have to "guess" which border squares lead somewhere. Zelda didn't have a lakes or ice plains seemingly leading off-border but actually being dead ends: all passable squares on a level border should either lead somewhere, or stop 1 square closer and have impassable squares on the actual border. Some bosses are way too easy compared to the others. Too many dungeons of the "magically floating in mid-air thus one wrong step and you fall to your death" type.
When a capsule is found, the capsules items should fill exactly from left to right (albeit which capsule item falls into which of the 6 spots would vary from game to game, the messages animation will always go from 1 to 6 in order, so that the story makes chronological sense). Also, when a capsule is found, showing in some way which new recipes got newly unlocked would help reduce confusion.
New recipes should appear as soon as you have all ingredients. For example, as soon as you have 2 Tiny Iron Nuggets + 1 Small Lava Globule in ship inventory, you'd get recipe of Weak Iron Bar. This should depend strictly on ship inventory, checked at each opening of research tab, not based on total stuff mined or random chance. I had 1 game where despite having 10+ Medium Azurite, still didnt get recipe of Large Azurite, and 1 game where 30 Iron Nuggets in inventory did not unlock Screws for 1 hour of play! Progress impossible until game suddenly "decides" to FINALLY unlock a recipe for no apparent reason is frustrating, plz remove randomness from getting recipes!
If I start hitting the SPACEBAr key *after* I started my jump instead of before, the robot will not dig the surface that is hit. Having to *keep* a key pressed nearly all game long this is extremely annoying. In next version, change it so that if player hit the spacebar even a LITTLE anytime during his jump, to mean that the robot will try to dig if it hits something.
In the 1st "tutorial" level, at the leftmost column, the square that is 2 squares above the emerald looks like it can be drilled but is actually indestructible. A rock should be there, no?
When using minerals to get repairs or fuel, the fuel and dmawg bars should be shown instead of forcing the layer to constantly move out and then back inside the cargo to know "when" he has enough repair/fuel.
Also, medium minerals and large should be worth respectively 3 and 9 units worth of repair/fuel. Currently, its better to always split big minerals. Maybe its a design choice, but whats the point of researching better sizes if the payout is less?
Alsom a tech to jump higher would be cool.
Thre game doesn't always unlock "Medium & Large fragments" research, a nd skips ahead unlocking more complex stuff instead, so basically you become kind of "stuck". If a new research is to become unlocked, all "prerequisite" researches not yet unlocked should also automatically unlock, too.
The game should detect completely separately keypressp-down and keypress-up, and react accordingly.
This way, it would not be important the order in which I press the up arrow key, the left arrow key, and the spacebar key: as soon as a valid "drilling target" square is being faced corresponding to any one of the keys currently in the "down" state, then the robot should dig. this is NOt an "arcade high dexterity" game, and I find that controlling the robot can be very frustrating at times. the player controls should be used to indicate player INTENTION, noty the actual player's PERFORMANCE in actually succeeding at accomplishing the action.
The the emporium and inventory, the game should remember what was last selected and use the same setup next time you enter in it.
i.e. if last time my 2nd backsac was open, then next time the same bag should be open when entering inventory, etc. Constantly having to select it again is a real hassle.
Graphics: Way better than the 1st game.
Interface and ease of use: The 1st game was actually better because it involved a LOT less "clickfest".à in order to do things.
Ok, so I'm in Emerald City, and when I reach level 21, the Thief Hideout disapears, but I haven't finished the two quests there (test the healer's boar tusk artefact, and get back the necklace).
So it's impossible finish those quests, thus impossible to unlock Ocean city, so I'm stuck.
Impossible to win because I'm too strong!
VERY bad game design!
Enemies that hit you for 51 or 72 damage when you start the game is not "old school". Big-numberitis syndrome is nothing new but old school tried to keep the numbers down to "reasonable values".
Instead of enemies hitting for 10-70 damage, divide the hero'S HP and the enemy damage by 10 (at least!), and if an enemy hits for "7.3" damagfe, it simply means he's hitting for 7 r 8 damage (the 0.3 being 30% of getting 8 damage instead of 7).
Same thing for dropped gold: instead of having 3" coins and "10" coins, why not a "1" coin, and a "3" coin instead? And simply dividing all prices by 3 (heck, the game is long enough, dividing buy prices in stores by 5 would simply mean a bit less grinding).
Now, use the same engine you are using to display dungeons, but make it display instead towns (with fences houses and "town stuff") and wilderness (trees, hills, mountains, lakes, etc.). Make the story a bit more complex, add a few NPCs. A simple way to "maximise" NPCs is simply reuse the same NPCs, with color palette changes.
You'd surely get a much more complete RPG experience.
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