Just finished the game, final thoughts and words for the devs.

[Soreg]

Let me preface by saying that at the end of the day I didn't regret buying it and seeing it through. The idea is wonderful and the game is full of charm and love, for a 3-person team project this was wonderful in its own way.

BUT. There's some weird decisions that lowered my overall enjoyment and I really want to put it here (as well as good words) - not as a slander, but as a food for thought for future projects (because hell yeah I want to know more about the lore and stuff, do more in this universe!).

So. To start - I played on focused because I wanted to perfect each part without stress, my heart is not taking adrenaline well. All my thoughts are through the prism of focused mode and I think it's the better way of experiencing the game.

1) Overall, the gameplay is very fun - I loved optimizing my workspace, doing things in optimal order and generally paying attention to things. The idea of singleplayer "Keep talking"-like focused on fixing modules is great and can be iterated further on. The only things I don't really experience throughout the playthrough are reactors and FTLs - because their danger. I'll talk about it more in part 3.

2) The background lore and story are captivating! I really wish there were more of it - the game is generally very criptic on it and it feels like seeing the very top of the giant iceberg of eldritch gods and weird cults. Each with their own distinct characterisation - and it's very fun! But I wish it would be just a bit deeper - right now it feels like a bunch of clues for the giant mistery that doesn't get resolved. Hope you'll dip deeper into it in the future!

3) Now for the harsh one - the biggest problem I see with the game is that it's a roguelike. Honestly, that feels like the worst decision considering the rest of ideas that went in. I've beaten the game in 30 hours and, i think, 15 runs, half of which was half-cooked in the early game while I was getting used to mechanics and dying to reactors. And while at the start resets don't feel too bad, during the last run I felt just drained and bored, not even bothering to take the proficiency test - just hoarding money early and then rushing to the finish.
The problem is that the modules and things get stale. And it feels even worse that every time you sent back to the very start and forced to slog through the early, simple and boring jobs. You can change the fuel, oil and snails only so much before it gets really, REALLY tiring and same-y. And because of that death feels like way too much of a punishment - you don't just sent back, you spend next half an hour in a slog of easy, boring gameplay.

I think the game would be much better and much more engaging if it would offer a fixed, curated day-by-day experience with more story-focused content and the ability to jump back to the timeline splits - imagine the structure like Zero Escape or Beacon Pines, where you have a tree of routes and you jump between the branches, uncovering more and more story with new knowledge. Mooncalf said at the end that time is non-linear - why not use it at our advantage too? Maybe even each possible death on these fixed routes reveals something story-related that helps you to prepare for something else instead of being just a fail.

Respect for you, devs, for trying something new and interesting, and making it with love. I hope you're doing well despite the bugs and frustrations, and will continue to evolve and flashing out the universe - because I definitely want more!

Cheers.

[Lionheartwolf]

I was okay for the most part with the pacing. It wasn't until the very last ending did I feel the repetitiveness kick in.

My only real gripe regarding gameplay is that it doesn't do a very good job respecting the troubleshooting process in general. (Especially at the end) There is a fine line between being punished for not RTFM and troubleshooting a problem. Yes, it can be funny when it's clearly an ID10T or PEBKAC issue. We get it, you shouldn't take that certain job.

It's not so funny when you are on the final mission and you flip the switch and learned you messed up somewhere even if you followed the manual to the T, then only to learn the issue was unrelated. Nor is it funny that a specific dialog choice I'm confident many people would choose is actually the wrong choice and now you have to go through an entire run again just to say "Yes" instead of "No."

It's moments like those where the game kinda hurts itself, and I feel that it's because it's not playing by its own rules. If you want to make a RTFM game, you need to make sure you absolutely nail the manual. If you had to restart a run ESPECIALLY in focused mode you better be able to go back to the manual and say, "That's where I messed up."

To be fair 90% of the game does this well. I rarely died because I read the manual, and even more rare without knowing why, but there are two sections I felt hurt the most, and that was the final ascension, and the combat mission, and unsurprisingly the reasons why I died were not in the manual. Unfortunately, it's just especially painful because those two places felt like the most inconvenient places to get to. I did not like stockpiling cards, or playing through the entire game to troubleshoot what I could do in those moments.I'd sooner learn to force quit the game before restarting a run, and that cannot be the intended method to play the game.


On a minor note I felt the adult humor doesn't land. It's superfluous at best, amd unfunny at worse. It's a good example of when people say the writing feels like a teenager who learned how to say the F word wrote the dialog. All of its best comedic moments are actually pretty clean, and all it's worst moments are when it's trying to rip off Rick and Morty.

Still, I don't want to give an impression that I do not like this game. It is one of my favorite games this year, and very under-the-radar/underrated. I think it's a great addition if you like games like Hardspace Shipbreaker. I just think some design choices didn't otherwise land in a particularly strong game.

["Donut☆]

I'm in the same boat as you guys. The way this game executes the RTFM concept is a gem. But the way the roguelite aspect is being executed is a huge disaster. It's been a while since I've seen a roguelite where you lose such an extreme amount of progress when you die. This could be fixed by making you lose the 'week' instead of the full run. If necessary, this could be implemented by letting us pay omens or money to reverse time to the beginning of the week.

[JoffyJ]

I agree with almost everything you said, I am pretty sick of the day 1 and 2 of these runs.
I do like the idea of the crafted missions. An intermediate solution would either be a checkpoint reward for acing the test days or letting us buy extra lives (or even a damn shield) with arcade tokens.

[n3verw1nt3r]

I agree with all of it.

[derw4tz]

i am taking a break for now; i am missing two endings but i don´t want to play the early game anymore; i hope i get the motivation caise i really want to finish it

personally i like rogue like but only if a run is ~1 hour tops; rogue likes with run duration 2h+ are always super weird

[Ζiоqch]

I've yet to muddle through Porkchop's ending.

Out of lack of motivation and monetary anxiety I have to say one of the other roadblocks is that the controller settings are somewhat finicky ass. I literally can't get rid of an opened FTL pack because everytime I try to select it I end up grabbing nothing.

Sometimes I can't select what I'm looking for until I back out of the module.

But otherwise yes this game is like Amatuer Surgeon. Very goofy but genuinely good.

Also I'm going to enjoy when this game inevitably gets an endless mode where you can place snails and cool reactors forever until you get locked into a pipe bomb job and die.