Hey again! I recently played through the new demo and I'm gonna be a bit honest I feel like the progression drastically slows down and it becomes quite a bit time consuming which in my opinion I don't mind taking time to do stages but after awhile it becomes a bit boring. Another thing that I kind of felt was a bit meh of a change was that 4-2 doesn't have an unlockable upgrade which I think was odd. I think you could definitely include that last upgrade as if you're someone like me I found it odd that 4-2 just doesn't have anything to unlock. I also want to mention that the cost for prestige is way too high in my opinion and would take too much time. I think lowering it heavily to maybe like 500K or somewhere below 750K is more fair in my own opinion. I think these changes could help make the game as fun as it was when I wrote my initial review of the game. It's still a good game though don't worry!! I just think the new demo needs a bit tweaking is all.
ive played the early access version a lil bit over the past 4 or 5 days, ive prestiged 5 times and gotten around 2/3 of the achievements and wanted to give some feedback along with pointing out some of the bugs ive noticed
feedback: -prestiges are a bit overpriced in my opinion and after a certain point can take entire days to achieve just a +1 bonus
-the rarity upgrade price scaling is also extremely overpriced, nearly doubling every single time for a +0.5% bonus feels a bit harsh and not worth upgrading after around 12/13%
-the upgrade wheel feels kinda weird as well, with the quality of runs heavily dictating on whether or not you get good upgrades or ones that just seem kind of pointless (the purple peg upgrade or the multiball upgrade for example)
-the time it takes to upgrade the buckets in later levels also feels quite rough, ive left it running all day only to come back to buckets being level 16/17 out of 25 with auto drop on max
-the ui is great and fits in very well with the rest of the game and doesnt feel intrusive at all
-the sfx are great but i wish there was a slider to adjust the volume rather than having it muted or unmuted and could also use a bit more variation as sometimes it can get a bit old hearing the same sound repeatedly (mostly noticed this in sea) and maybe another thing could be muting the sound effects for the balls hitting the buckets
bugs:
-the random peg upgrade never maxes out once every peg reaches golden and also can waste tons of money when just holding down because sometimes it will try to upgrade a specific peg multiple times and continue costing that amount of money despite the peg only upgrading every half second or so
-the pegs on sea have a small issue with being cut off visually sometimes, the severity seems to fluctuate because ive had a couple times where only a quarter of the peg is showing at the top of the screen and others where its not nearly as noticeable (seems to always occur on the very top row of pegs)
-prestiges say they only add a +1% bonus rather than +1 bonus
conclusion: very fun game with the slightly limited amount of content for the time being and i enjoy it a lot, very minimal bugs but the difficulty seems to ramp up exponentially later in the game and the prestiges start to not feel as rewarding in comparison to the price and could maybe use an additional buff depending on how many balls you have collected, still very enjoyable though and im really looking forward to seeing the future updates, keep up the good work :]
This is amazing, thank you so much for the feedback!
Stuff we've already fixed, but haven't pushed the update yet: - prestige (250,000 required, and 2x multiplier i think) - random peg max based on peg count - upgrade wheel will no longer be associated with stages! card choices instead
Stuff on our radar: - the pixel scaling issues you see on the pegs. i need to fix a lot of things T_T
Stuff we'll fix: - ball rarity cost scaling - great suggestion for the audio sliders!! will try to add that.
Stuff I'll try to keep my eye on: - buckets are going to get slightly harder to upgrade at later levels, so i'll try to keep this feedback in mind. I don't want it to be prohibitively hard. I also want the ball multiplier to be much friendlier as the game goes on, because it does hit a ceiling in a really bad way.
Progression is rough. Having to rebuy all the upgrades at every stage isn't great. Especially at the stone stage where 4-2 doesn't get you a new upgrade and you have to reach 4-3 to get to the fifth stage, only to do it all over again with just a wheel spin to show for it. Went back to first stage to get the third star and it gave me an achievement. It gave me the 1.2x achievement multiplier but I expected a bit more from it. The wheel spins also feel a bit unfair, I don't know how much faster my progress would be if I had better wheel spins. Feels like getting punished by the randomness. Even if you had the theoretical best spins you wouldn't know it.
Look and feel of the UI is perfect, and the sound design is amazing too. Love the unique sfx on every stage.
Sorry if this is harsh, just sharing my experience. Overall it's still fun but at 4-2 I tapped out. As I understand from your dev log linked below there will be global upgrades in an upcoming version so most of my concerns are probably addressed at that point.
Thank you so much for the feedback and for checking out the dev log! I do hope to have this stuff addressed soon -- a lot of people agree with you. I agree too. We're working on having cards to choose from 2-3 random buffs instead of the wheel for stages, and I'd like a rule set where there will always been one active play vs one passive play to choose from. We'll keep the wheel because wheels are fun, but we'll probably attach that flow to achievements, prestige, or both. Just a fun boost instead of critical growth. I think the new currency splits will help, with global and stage-based being separate, so hopefully there will always feel like there's long-term progress. I'm also working on rebalancing the stage requirements, and prestige is WAY cheaper now (250,000 and I'll see how that feels.) There will be another big update at some point, but it might take a while to get everything rebuilt.
It sure will! We have a publisher who will be helping us to localize in Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Thai, and we'd also like to do French/Spanish/German and maybe others. It's taking a while to update all the text to be localized strings, but we'll get there someday.
couple of issues found in the bought for version: the pop-up that shows up every time you unlock a new area, is blocked by the spinner, and the pop-up is gone by the time you are done with the spinner.
the option to upgrade a random peg doesn't "max" out when you are done upgrading all the pegs, so you can waste gold buying it despite it not doing anything. --- there is no indicator while in game that you have enough achievements unlocked to go to the menu and upgrade the bonus, nor is there an indicator for when to prestige.
prestige currently seems worthless, it only gives +1% bonus when you prestige, and the balls needed escalate fast!
i finished the game without prestiging, as i was lucky and got bonuses to golden ball falling several times, so i had no money problems, and after prestiging there was no additional content, and the 1% bonus did absolutely nothing to help out. Having the excact same gameplay loop the second time around, but with a pitable 1% bonus made the second round incredibly boring to play. ):
Ah yeah the achievement is on the wrong layer and pops at the wrong time. I think I've seen that bug 10000 times and have stopped noticing it. XD But you're right, that should be fixed!
Random peg max -- this has been fixed on our end already. It now maxed based on how many pegs are in the stage, and someday we'll have stages with different numbers of pegs.
As a UX designer, I agree that we need something to tell you to come back to the main menu! I think a red dot on the home button will do the trick. Good callout, thank you! --- And prestige... Yes, it is definitely undesigned at this point, which is a big source of stress. We don't have a great plan yet, but it's super helpful to have people playing longer sessions and sharing feedback. Can I ask some questions?:
1 - Do you think it should be cheaper to prestige, and encourage people to prestige long before they hit the later levels?
2 - Achievement sets give a +0.2% multiplier, and prestige gives +1.0%, which validly feels underwhelming for the cost. We could do half the cost, but keep the reward, or we could crank up the reward. We could also add a currency to earn with prestige, which would need a separate shop -- and I'm not opposed to this at all either. I would love to hear your thoughts!
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Hey again! I recently played through the new demo and I'm gonna be a bit honest I feel like the progression drastically slows down and it becomes quite a bit time consuming which in my opinion I don't mind taking time to do stages but after awhile it becomes a bit boring. Another thing that I kind of felt was a bit meh of a change was that 4-2 doesn't have an unlockable upgrade which I think was odd. I think you could definitely include that last upgrade as if you're someone like me I found it odd that 4-2 just doesn't have anything to unlock. I also want to mention that the cost for prestige is way too high in my opinion and would take too much time. I think lowering it heavily to maybe like 500K or somewhere below 750K is more fair in my own opinion. I think these changes could help make the game as fun as it was when I wrote my initial review of the game. It's still a good game though don't worry!! I just think the new demo needs a bit tweaking is all.
ive played the early access version a lil bit over the past 4 or 5 days, ive prestiged 5 times and gotten around 2/3 of the achievements and wanted to give some feedback along with pointing out some of the bugs ive noticed
feedback:
-prestiges are a bit overpriced in my opinion and after a certain point can take entire days to achieve just a +1 bonus
-the rarity upgrade price scaling is also extremely overpriced, nearly doubling every single time for a +0.5% bonus feels a bit harsh and not worth upgrading after around 12/13%
-the upgrade wheel feels kinda weird as well, with the quality of runs heavily dictating on whether or not you get good upgrades or ones that just seem kind of pointless (the purple peg upgrade or the multiball upgrade for example)
-the time it takes to upgrade the buckets in later levels also feels quite rough, ive left it running all day only to come back to buckets being level 16/17 out of 25 with auto drop on max
-the ui is great and fits in very well with the rest of the game and doesnt feel intrusive at all
-the sfx are great but i wish there was a slider to adjust the volume rather than having it muted or unmuted and could also use a bit more variation as sometimes it can get a bit old hearing the same sound repeatedly (mostly noticed this in sea) and maybe another thing could be muting the sound effects for the balls hitting the buckets
bugs:
-the random peg upgrade never maxes out once every peg reaches golden and also can waste tons of money when just holding down because sometimes it will try to upgrade a specific peg multiple times and continue costing that amount of money despite the peg only upgrading every half second or so
-the pegs on sea have a small issue with being cut off visually sometimes, the severity seems to fluctuate because ive had a couple times where only a quarter of the peg is showing at the top of the screen and others where its not nearly as noticeable (seems to always occur on the very top row of pegs)
-prestiges say they only add a +1% bonus rather than +1 bonus
conclusion: very fun game with the slightly limited amount of content for the time being and i enjoy it a lot, very minimal bugs but the difficulty seems to ramp up exponentially later in the game and the prestiges start to not feel as rewarding in comparison to the price and could maybe use an additional buff depending on how many balls you have collected, still very enjoyable though and im really looking forward to seeing the future updates, keep up the good work :]
This is amazing, thank you so much for the feedback!
Stuff we've already fixed, but haven't pushed the update yet:
- prestige (250,000 required, and 2x multiplier i think)
- random peg max based on peg count
- upgrade wheel will no longer be associated with stages! card choices instead
Stuff on our radar:
- the pixel scaling issues you see on the pegs. i need to fix a lot of things T_T
Stuff we'll fix:
- ball rarity cost scaling
- great suggestion for the audio sliders!! will try to add that.
Stuff I'll try to keep my eye on:
- buckets are going to get slightly harder to upgrade at later levels, so i'll try to keep this feedback in mind. I don't want it to be prohibitively hard. I also want the ball multiplier to be much friendlier as the game goes on, because it does hit a ceiling in a really bad way.
Progression is rough. Having to rebuy all the upgrades at every stage isn't great. Especially at the stone stage where 4-2 doesn't get you a new upgrade and you have to reach 4-3 to get to the fifth stage, only to do it all over again with just a wheel spin to show for it. Went back to first stage to get the third star and it gave me an achievement. It gave me the 1.2x achievement multiplier but I expected a bit more from it. The wheel spins also feel a bit unfair, I don't know how much faster my progress would be if I had better wheel spins. Feels like getting punished by the randomness. Even if you had the theoretical best spins you wouldn't know it.
Look and feel of the UI is perfect, and the sound design is amazing too. Love the unique sfx on every stage.
Sorry if this is harsh, just sharing my experience. Overall it's still fun but at 4-2 I tapped out. As I understand from your dev log linked below there will be global upgrades in an upcoming version so most of my concerns are probably addressed at that point.
Thank you so much for the feedback and for checking out the dev log! I do hope to have this stuff addressed soon -- a lot of people agree with you. I agree too.
We're working on having cards to choose from 2-3 random buffs instead of the wheel for stages, and I'd like a rule set where there will always been one active play vs one passive play to choose from. We'll keep the wheel because wheels are fun, but we'll probably attach that flow to achievements, prestige, or both. Just a fun boost instead of critical growth.
I think the new currency splits will help, with global and stage-based being separate, so hopefully there will always feel like there's long-term progress.
I'm also working on rebalancing the stage requirements, and prestige is WAY cheaper now (250,000 and I'll see how that feels.) There will be another big update at some point, but it might take a while to get everything rebuilt.
I can no longer go full screen in the browser version. it also says its rendering at an odd number and will not give me an option to fix
Can you try again when you get a chance? We've uploaded a new build that will hopefully fix this!
yes! it works now thank you!
I liked the game. Will it be localized to other languages?
It sure will! We have a publisher who will be helping us to localize in Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Thai, and we'd also like to do French/Spanish/German and maybe others. It's taking a while to update all the text to be localized strings, but we'll get there someday.
couple of issues found in the bought for version:
the pop-up that shows up every time you unlock a new area, is blocked by the spinner, and the pop-up is gone by the time you are done with the spinner.
the option to upgrade a random peg doesn't "max" out when you are done upgrading all the pegs, so you can waste gold buying it despite it not doing anything.
---
there is no indicator while in game that you have enough achievements unlocked to go to the menu and upgrade the bonus, nor is there an indicator for when to prestige.
prestige currently seems worthless, it only gives +1% bonus when you prestige, and the balls needed escalate fast!
i finished the game without prestiging, as i was lucky and got bonuses to golden ball falling several times, so i had no money problems, and after prestiging there was no additional content, and the 1% bonus did absolutely nothing to help out.
Having the excact same gameplay loop the second time around, but with a pitable 1% bonus made the second round incredibly boring to play. ):
Ah yeah the achievement is on the wrong layer and pops at the wrong time. I think I've seen that bug 10000 times and have stopped noticing it. XD But you're right, that should be fixed!
Random peg max -- this has been fixed on our end already. It now maxed based on how many pegs are in the stage, and someday we'll have stages with different numbers of pegs.
As a UX designer, I agree that we need something to tell you to come back to the main menu! I think a red dot on the home button will do the trick. Good callout, thank you!
---
And prestige... Yes, it is definitely undesigned at this point, which is a big source of stress. We don't have a great plan yet, but it's super helpful to have people playing longer sessions and sharing feedback. Can I ask some questions?:
1 - Do you think it should be cheaper to prestige, and encourage people to prestige long before they hit the later levels?
2 - Achievement sets give a +0.2% multiplier, and prestige gives +1.0%, which validly feels underwhelming for the cost. We could do half the cost, but keep the reward, or we could crank up the reward. We could also add a currency to earn with prestige, which would need a separate shop -- and I'm not opposed to this at all either. I would love to hear your thoughts!
Thank you so much for the amazing feedback. <3
instantly wishlisted, amazing game!!! cant wait for the release :)
Thank you so much!!