Feedback, v0.4.01 Mines update

[0d1]

Context of feedback: played through and obtained a passport in January 2025, in version 0.4.01, built mines access in the tenement as well as upgraded to Rank III/IV in many apartments. (first time playing)
I know this is early access.
I know this is early access.
I know this is early access.
This is a great game, so far. But, there is room for improvement. All of this feedback is offered in the spirit of wanting the game to be better. Some of this feedback is very critical, so if that's offensive to you, probably best to just move to the next post.

- Loading Screen times. These are too long and/or too frequent. I understand the limits of the technology, but vastly more complicated games have vastly better performance and/or no loading screens of any kind, or loading screens of less than 3 seconds. This one design choice is having a profoundly negative consequence while playing/testing.

- Many of these issues below wouldn't be so bad if Loading Screens weren't so long & frequent. I might be able to put up with going to the doctor every day if it wasn't another two loading screens. I might be inclined to go into the mines more if it wasn't 4 loading screens, and so on.

- GPU load in general. Yes, I know it's Unity, and I know you probably don't have the license that permits you to modify the main Unity rendering thread, because that's expensive. Even so, 40% GPU load at the main menu on a 3050 is unacceptable. 70-100% in the Mines is just intolerable, given the simplicity of the scenes. It's like there's no visibility culling or rendering distance limits being used at all, anywhere. And yes, every. single. graphical option is set to low/off. That's the only way it's barely playable. And yes, I've tried it on two different machines. As with so many Unity games, it's not my hardware, it's the game.

- Mental Health does not appear to be working as intended. Even doing everything "correctly" (good food, good bed, sleeping, no addictions) mental health will drop continuously, forever. Taking pills only makes it worse. Eventually, in every attempt to figure this out, I had to resort to console commands to set the target to 1 in order for Mental Health to be enabled at all without continuously dropping down to less than 40%, no matter what I did. To me, this appears to be buggy behaviour, but perhaps there is some aspect of the game that I'm missing or perhaps everyone MUST become a green mushroom/duck addict? If so, that's .. a strange design choice, because now I just turn off the mechanic entirely to stop having to go to the doctor every day.
I'm aware of the ducks quest line that provides the adjustment to mental health. If that's required, then so bet it, but again, that's a strange choice without explicitly telling the player if they don't do this, self-harm is inevitable.

- Sauna should have a thermostat. Even the cheapest Sauna in the world has a thermostat. In Stalburg, maybe all have one except the Makeshift/Starting sauna..

- Tool/battery wear is too fast. This one should have a slider/toggle in difficulty or made considerably better, or have a skill associated with it that reduces it as time goes on. In particular, the flashlight and axe both are.. truly silly levels of wear on use.

- Some bottlenecks are pretty severe. Glass panes. Limestone. Asbestos. Insulation wool. Electronic parts, plastic parts.. Yes, eventually you can find them, but on the first run through, intensely frustrating and/or tedious. It felt like the game was broken, when I couldn't get raw materials via at least two methods, when the gameplay expected me to (for tenement upgrades). This was particularly glaring with Limestone and Electronic parts. You can't make electronic parts until you have access to the mines to buy the electronics station, but you can't get that until MUCH later, so your building upgrades halt. Similar to limestone, even with the ability to mine rocks outside the tenement, this does not provide limestone. Yes, you can get it randomly, but.. it would be better to have the option to get it some other way, intentionally, too.

- I still was unable to find the 'crusher' to change rock into ore to smelt. I know it exists somewhere because of posts from other players/testers, but never found it on two playthroughs.

- I obtained a passport, had quests telling me to go to the Bazaar, then I get the message "the developers have not released the bazaar". Very disappointing, ngl.

- Renters loop. This one was a bit of a surprise. Once a renter is in place, they're just a source of income and say three or four canned phrases. That's it. You go to all this trouble over weeks/months to get a place that is good enough, and there is nothing further. I think there's some room for improvement there. Many possible loops, like job creation, crime 'family', and similar.

- Income in general, money from NPCs is too little. Even at modest levels of manufacturing/production scale, all NPCs run out of money to pay for what you provide. I should be able to sell my food, drinks, animals, mash, ethanol, methanol, & furniture without limit. OR permit a slider/toggle difficulty option for NPCs to have no limit on funds. There needs to be an additional second tier gameplay loop to becoming a master chef, distiller, carpenter, fermenter, grower, blacksmith, and so on.

- There should be a gameplay loop to give/sell things to people, and it should make them sad, happy or help/hinder them to recover. This should/may go along with the player being able to sell what they produce in general, and/or hiring/extorting people working at the tenement to work in your workshop to supply your Store. This means you can provide good things or 'bad' things, at scale.

- No Leather roll recipe. Simply not in the file. Thread + leather scraps seems like a good idea.

- Lettuce can only be grown from seeds. Again, not in the file to use the lettuce plant/produce rather than seeds. Different than all other (?) plants as far as I can tell. But you need lettuce for every sandwich recipe..

- The copper still (distillery) doesn't work. You can't "turn it on" like you can all other distilleries. It's just.. broken. All the rest work just fine.

- Mail from apartment. Basement vs. apartment. So this one becomes very glaring later on. Most upgrades block access to YOUR apartment, and you don't get your mail. I ended up with invoices past due because there's no way for me to get my mail. So, if the player apartment is under construction, there should be a mailbox on the wall outside, or some other place to get your mail like at the Hostel or similar. This breaks several game loops, and should be fixed. Even having the option to place a mailbox on a stairwell wall yourself would be great, if you could get that blueprint easily.

- Magic/OSRat; These appear to be potentially great gameplay loops, but.. It's too vague. If there is a compelling reason to get high or use the OSRat, it's unclear outside the one quest that uses it (to talk to the 'corpse'). It seems like a missed opportunity for something great, but.. there was no reason to explore it further.

- Non-rat Animals are very rare. Found lots of rats and one chicken. Never saw a cat or dog. I got a passport, but no cat or dog. It's possible this is limited because I didn't choose this during character creation? If so, that's a shame, and it would be nice to be able to have pets and/or animals for production via another means.

- Fell through the world into the void going out through the jail vent, in those crouching tunnels. Only time I saw a bug like that, but there was no option except to go back to a previous save.

- The "speeding tickets" for the minitrains are ridiculous. That should not be in game, or at least give me the choice to blow up the cameras after I get my first ticket.

- One of the minitrains got 'stuck' in a spot in the service area where it would not move, after I had used it many times. Trying to power it on, the lights would flicker and it would just turn off. Once in this state, you can't fix it, and now you have to walk everywhere. If this is a fuel issue, there's no way to fix it that I could find, and I have lots of fuel.

- Elevators should be faster than walking, and in most cases, they really aren't, currently.

- stack limits / charge limits are vastly too small, in my opinion. But, they can remain as they are by default, provided the ability to adjust stack limits, recipes and items via JSON editing also remains through to v 1.0 and beyond. JSON editing is one of the greatest features of this game, so please leave that in place.

- even at max normal skill (10?) the player does not always produce excellent results. It would be nice if, at max, with the best machines, excellent was consistent.

- The drawing board produces repeat blueprints. It probably shouldn't produce a blueprint that you already have, given the entire point of it is to obtain new blueprints.

- bugs; often the name of what you're interacting with does not update, and remains at an object you opened or interacted with previously, until you change menus or go back in/out of inventory. Also, sometimes the quest text UI widget shows the goal of the tenement updates in place of the next step of the quest. Again, switching menus updates this buggy display, and it doesn't persist.


Visually the game is great, no real issues. I had to turn off all the fancy graphics features to get GPU load down to reasonable amounts, but even with everything low, it's still good enough for me.
The magic/high and OSRat visual effects are very well done, as is the whole growing mechanic in general.
Interactions with & placement of objects in the world are responsive, liquid movement and handling is great & seamless.
Being able to move furniture objects that contain objects is fantastic, so please keep that feature.

[Apok]

Originally posted by 0d1:

- I still was unable to find the 'crusher' to change rock into ore to smelt. I know it exists somewhere because of posts from other players/testers, but never found it on two playthroughs.

Talk to the guy outside OS mine services. Sometimes he has a jaw crusher you can buy for 1320 RM. Sell the crushed ore with your tipping wagon for good RM.

This game is great and the mines are super fun. I have only a few suggestions.

-The range of the pickaxe should be increased. I feel like my arms are 6 inches long when mining.

-Need a way to see while mining either let us use the flashlight while the pickaxe is equipped or maybe add a purchasable headlamp.

-Ore nodes should respawn. I haven't seen any respawn yet. Maybe I just haven't waited long enough though.

[kodes]

Originally posted by Apok:

This game is great and the mines are super fun. I have only a few suggestions.

I have yet to try the mines content, I suppose I'm waiting for some sort of performance (/ bug patch)

it's completely unplayable, game drops to <1fps in the mines for me unfortunately, while the rest of the game runs alright. Not sure if it's a me issue, a my save issue, or just general performance problems in the mines as this user above hinted at.

[0d1]

Originally posted by kodes:

I have yet to try the mines content, I suppose I'm waiting for some sort of performance (/ bug patch)

it's completely unplayable, game drops to <1fps in the mines for me unfortunately, while the rest of the game runs alright. Not sure if it's a me issue, a my save issue, or just general performance problems in the mines as this user above hinted at.

Performance is definitely worse in the mines, for me, compared to anywhere else.
I don't know the exact reasons, but you could try (what I did anyway) changing all graphics settings to lowest/low/off and seeing if that helps.

For me, instead of FPS dropping to single digits everywhere in the mines (as you're seeing), it only drops when I enter the OS Mine Services shack for a few seconds. But yes, the mines run my RTX3050 GPU at 70-100% continuously. It's certainly not ideal, and completely unlike the rest of the game, which is of course not how it should be, given the nature of the scenes being rendered.

[kodes]

Originally posted by 0d1:

Originally posted by kodes:

I have yet to try the mines content, I suppose I'm waiting for some sort of performance (/ bug patch)

it's completely unplayable, game drops to <1fps in the mines for me unfortunately, while the rest of the game runs alright. Not sure if it's a me issue, a my save issue, or just general performance problems in the mines as this user above hinted at.

Performance is definitely worse in the mines, for me, compared to anywhere else.
I don't know the exact reasons, but you could try (what I did anyway) changing all graphics settings to lowest/low/off and seeing if that helps.

For me, instead of FPS dropping to single digits everywhere in the mines (as you're seeing), it only drops when I enter the OS Mine Services shack for a few seconds. But yes, the mines run my RTX3050 GPU at 70-100% continuously. It's certainly not ideal, and completely unlike the rest of the game, which is of course not how it should be, given the nature of the scenes being rendered.

That may indicate some merit to your claims of no culling (or very poor culling) / render distance being in the game's code, which is a game issue, rather than just a Unity engine issue. Considering how many props, and how large the mines are, it checks the boxes.

I do love the game and hope this gets tinkered with soon.

[Otter]

I agree about lots of load screens ...

[ReZpawner]

- Sauna should have a thermostat. Even the cheapest Sauna in the world has a thermostat. In Stalburg, maybe all have one except the Makeshift/Starting sauna..

They do. There's a small thermometer on the wall of every sauna in the game. (At least I have never seen one that didn't have one)


- Tool/battery wear is too fast. This one should have a slider/toggle in difficulty or made considerably better, or have a skill associated with it that reduces it as time goes on. In particular, the flashlight and axe both are.. truly silly levels of wear on use.

There's a super-flashlight that lasts a VERY long time. The basic ones could use some balancing though.


- I still was unable to find the 'crusher' to change rock into ore to smelt. I know it exists somewhere because of posts from other players/testers, but never found it on two playthroughs.

You buy it from the guy outside Mining Services, or upgrade your mines to level 4


- Income in general, money from NPCs is too little. Even at modest levels of manufacturing/production scale, all NPCs run out of money to pay for what you provide. I should be able to sell my food, drinks, animals, mash, ethanol, methanol, & furniture without limit. OR permit a slider/toggle difficulty option for NPCs to have no limit on funds. There needs to be an additional second tier gameplay loop to becoming a master chef, distiller, carpenter, fermenter, grower, blacksmith, and so on.

Sell mushroom moonshine to the guy in the mines. It'll net you ~30 - 40k every day.


- No Leather roll recipe. Simply not in the file. Thread + leather scraps seems like a good idea.

Yeah, seems like an oversight. Should be in the game.


- Lettuce can only be grown from seeds. Again, not in the file to use the lettuce plant/produce rather than seeds. Different than all other (?) plants as far as I can tell. But you need lettuce for every sandwich recipe..

This, leeks and cabbage all needs this fix.


- The copper still (distillery) doesn't work. You can't "turn it on" like you can all other distilleries. It's just.. broken. All the rest work just fine.

It works fine here. I have 4 of them running nearly constantly. Submit bug report?


- Mail from apartment. Basement vs. apartment. So this one becomes very glaring later on. Most upgrades block access to YOUR apartment, and you don't get your mail. I ended up with invoices past due because there's no way for me to get my mail. So, if the player apartment is under construction, there should be a mailbox on the wall outside, or some other place to get your mail like at the Hostel or similar. This breaks several game loops, and should be fixed. Even having the option to place a mailbox on a stairwell wall yourself would be great, if you could get that blueprint easily.

Can confirm this issue. Nearly got thrown in prison for upgrading my walls to level 4.


- Magic/OSRat; These appear to be potentially great gameplay loops, but.. It's too vague. If there is a compelling reason to get high or use the OSRat, it's unclear outside the one quest that uses it (to talk to the 'corpse'). It seems like a missed opportunity for something great, but.. there was no reason to explore it further.

Yeah, this should've been made clearer. I see a lot of youtubers completely missing out on the OSRat content.


- Non-rat Animals are very rare. Found lots of rats and one chicken. Never saw a cat or dog. I got a passport, but no cat or dog. It's possible this is limited because I didn't choose this during character creation? If so, that's a shame, and it would be nice to be able to have pets and/or animals for production via another means.

Never seen a dog. Not sure if they even exist in the game. Cats can be bought from a lady in tenant A.


- The "speeding tickets" for the minitrains are ridiculous. That should not be in game, or at least give me the choice to blow up the cameras after I get my first ticket.

I actually loved this little detail. Even when the tickets were duplicated.


- Elevators should be faster than walking, and in most cases, they really aren't, currently.

They aren't in real life either in most apartmentbuildings.


- even at max normal skill (10?) the player does not always produce excellent results. It would be nice if, at max, with the best machines, excellent was consistent.

Drunk? I noticed a huge change in quality from sober to drunk in the game, which quite frankly, makes sense.


- The drawing board produces repeat blueprints. It probably shouldn't produce a blueprint that you already have, given the entire point of it is to obtain new blueprints.

Agreed.

[0d1]

Originally posted by ReZpawner:

... They do. There's a small thermometer on the wall of every sauna in the game. (At least I have never seen one that didn't have one)

They all have thermometers, but none (that I've seen yet) have a thermostat where you can set the target temperature.
This turns it into a situation where you're constantly turning the silly thing on and off to maybe get a few throws of the bucket at the coals, making using it anything but relaxing.
I mean, I guess you can just use it until you take overheat damage, but a thermostat would (ideally) fix that problem.

Most modern/nordic saunas have a wide range of temperature set points, and opinions vary (as expected) regarding what is 'best'.

[Jarlim]

Originally posted by 0d1:

Originally posted by ReZpawner:

... They do. There's a small thermometer on the wall of every sauna in the game. (At least I have never seen one that didn't have one)

They all have thermometers, but none (that I've seen yet) have a thermostat where you can set the target temperature.
This turns it into a situation where you're constantly turning the silly thing on and off to maybe get a few throws of the bucket at the coals, making using it anything but relaxing.
I mean, I guess you can just use it until you take overheat damage, but a thermostat would (ideally) fix that problem.

Most modern/nordic saunas have a wide range of temperature set points, and opinions vary (as expected) regarding what is 'best'.

Look, with how the game keeps updating I fully expect the next patch to not only remove thermometers but also make the sauna randomly spray you with acid.

[kodes]

Originally posted by Jarlim:

Originally posted by 0d1:

They all have thermometers, but none (that I've seen yet) have a thermostat where you can set the target temperature.
This turns it into a situation where you're constantly turning the silly thing on and off to maybe get a few throws of the bucket at the coals, making using it anything but relaxing.
I mean, I guess you can just use it until you take overheat damage, but a thermostat would (ideally) fix that problem.

Most modern/nordic saunas have a wide range of temperature set points, and opinions vary (as expected) regarding what is 'best'.

Look, with how the game keeps updating I fully expect the next patch to not only remove thermometers but also make the sauna randomly spray you with acid.

You say that, yet pre-mines update a >24hr jail sentence meant you just starve to death because they don't feed you.

[Nyu]

i only agree with one thing of these, we need shorter loading times or less loading zones.

i dont mind loading 2 times entering and leaving a house, but getting to the mines for example...
if it would be less often i wouldnt care if some of them would be 30 secounds
or if they would be 3 secounds iit could stay like this.
but so many and kinda random amounts from 5 to 20 secounds for no reason changing is at my limit.

i can live with this, but one complain i understand.

most others seems like attentionproblem or knowledge lack cause didnt care to read or try stuff out.
i dont judge you on that, but you really dont need the console ever beside of when jail was bugged not feeding you for 4 days or you got stuck somewhere and cannot move anymore.

[kodes]

Originally posted by Nyu:

i only agree with one thing of these, we need shorter loading times or less loading zones.

i dont mind loading 2 times entering and leaving a house, but getting to the mines for example...
if it would be less often i wouldnt care if some of them would be 30 secounds
or if they would be 3 secounds iit could stay like this.
but so many and kinda random amounts from 5 to 20 secounds for no reason changing is at my limit.

i can live with this, but one complain i understand.

most others seems like attentionproblem or knowledge lack cause didnt care to read or try stuff out.
i dont judge you on that, but you really dont need the console ever beside of when jail was bugged not feeding you for 4 days or you got stuck somewhere and cannot move anymore.

Having explored a bit;

My biggest groan came from the monitoring tower
The loading time implies the game is completely unloading the mines, and then reloading the mines when you enter and exit respectively... for that miniscule, tiny interior, like really?.. lol

[ExoKayne]

I would be happy if you refill bottles and drink the whole bottle like in the O-Markt and not just 0.1 l of it.

[BEST FRIEND WORM]

Originally posted by 0d1:

- Mental Health does not appear to be working as intended. Even doing everything "correctly" (good food, good bed, sleeping, no addictions) mental health will drop continuously, forever. Taking pills only makes it worse. Eventually, in every attempt to figure this out, I had to resort to console commands to set the target to 1 in order for Mental Health to be enabled at all without continuously dropping down to less than 40%, no matter what I did. To me, this appears to be buggy behaviour, but perhaps there is some aspect of the game that I'm missing or perhaps everyone MUST become a green mushroom/duck addict? If so, that's .. a strange design choice, because now I just turn off the mechanic entirely to stop having to go to the doctor every day.
I'm aware of the ducks quest line that provides the adjustment to mental health. If that's required, then so bet it, but again, that's a strange choice without explicitly telling the player if they don't do this, self-harm is inevitable.

For what it's worth, the mental health stat IS manageable without addictions, it just takes more work. How long have you been playing for in in-game time? My main (default difficulty) save is several months in, addiction free for the majority of that, and I only see my mood start to dip when I seriously neglect other needs and/or work at the call centre. That character did go through a phase of pretty extreme depression right after beating the addictions, but high quality food, a good bed, lots of time in the sauna, and minimal use of antidepressants for a few weeks eventually brought it under control. It's a pretty miserable slog, but I'm pretty confident that the dev did not intend for it to be totally unbeatable without addictions. You might've been experiencing a bug, or there might have been something you missed, given how obscure the mental health stat is.

[Otter]

When there is heating system with clothes (I think that was planned at some point?), I hope there'll be some extra pockets. Or belt pouches for 1-2 extra items like is PSX Resident Evils. I feel that even backpack is not quite enough for venturing to far away places like mines.

[kodes]

Originally posted by Otter:

When there is heating system with clothes (I think that was planned at some time?), I hope there'll be some extra pockets. Or belt pouches for 1-2 extra items like is PSX Resident Evils. I feel that even backpack is not quite enough for venturing to far away places like mines.

Interesting.. I haven't been that deep in the mines yet. What is your basic inventory loadout like? I only keep water in mine, so it's always empty. Food, pills, utilities are all in my backpack, and anything I don't want stolen goes to my apt.