I haven’t been playing for long so perhaps some of the below are misunderstandings, but I’d still like to give it a go:
- Click beside a button on a dialog clicks on the room screen behind (e.g. When creating a new game and you miss the “topic” button, there will be a context dialog created behind for the main window which will still be visible when dialog is closed)
- Despite my engine only containing 3D graphics, text and 2D graphics options still remain for me to choose. Likewise for simple sounds and some other elements.
- There are some research options that are not left evolutionary (multiple choices are available to research at the same time). Examples: physics, body motion, probably some more
- Room context menu is sometimes hard to click. The button / menu option will not highlight when mouse is over (except if I move the mouse just a bit higher and to the right
)
4.1. The entire UI feels somewhat unresponsive. This was definitely made with touch devices in mind, not mouse. Additionally, sometimes it’s hard to click at the right place… - I cannot delete an old and obsolete engine
- Non-skippable animated dialogs (e.g. reviews, booth visitors) - I just don’t want to wait 30 seconds to see the final result. The animation just doesn’t do it for me. Make it siilar to XP dialog when the game is done
- There is no going back from “Complete game” button. Sometimes I click it by mistake before all the bugs are fixed and I can only trash or go forward from there. At least add a “fix bugs first” or “X” button.
7.1. Despite releasing game full of bugs, that game is no more likely to get bad reviews, reviews mentioning the bugs or patch requests than a game that had all the bugs fixed. In fact, during my yesterday 30-year run, I had to create 2 patches (on 2 perfect releases) while I managed to release 3 games with outstanding bugs (and required no patches) - The transition from garage to office is a pretty steep one. The only option a player has is to use publisher deals, otherwise you have no chance of generating enough money to survive. Perhaps this is even normal, but the tutorial should definitely stress this to the player.
- Training employees is futile since the only resource limited in this game is research points. It is much easier to convert cash into better employee stats (hire a new employee with better stats, fire existing one)
- Employees / avatar should gain attributes through work, just as it happens when that internal contest is held. Otherwise the initial employees are all fired when I can afford the 2M search and avatar becomes the least effective employee.
- Bank loan is much too low and much too expensive. It doesn’t help much when one is in dire straits
- You can go bankrupt just as you release a 9/10 game (but before you rake the cash in). Talk about heartless banks
Hope this helps a bit.
Edit: discussed with friend, remembered some more:
13. Size of game doesn’t matter, fanbase does (only fanbase determines how many copies you will sell)
13.1. Text based games still rock when 3D graphics is the de-facto standard
13.2. Actually none of the engine features matters whatsoever as long as I keep adding the features.
14. While finishing yesterday’s round I noticed that I was slaving the employees in the bottom row for decades actually (one was my first employee) because I didn’t notice the exhaustion bar. At the very least, such an employee should threat with quitting.
15. Pirates / fans --> the decision has no impact at all. So what if I lose 10% of my current fans. My next game will bring 25% more in… Same goes for the “nice guy” decision: the number of fans gained is insignificant
16. I’m such a wiz-kid that my engines are portable even to platforms yet-to be released.
17. There’s no price for switching platforms: I can switch target platform at any time and it will not increase development time, generate more research points or otherwise show on my performance.
18. There’s no incentive to create specialized engines: just create an engine that has it all and then decide in-game what to use. Inclusion of features should be priced exponentially, possibly by development stage or something (e.g. supporting one type of graphics is cheap (as is now), 2 types doubles the price of entire engine, 3 types quadruples it, etc. Perhaps not so drastic with all engine features, but it should definitely come at a price) That way it would make sense to create single player engines, MMO engines, etc.
18.1. Adding platform support (well, constraint really - see 16) to engine would definitely help too.
19. Finishing training a new employee during a hired job will result in negative D/T points left