i’ve played 4 games (2 bankrupt and 2 to the end, researching everything there is), all on version 1.4.5. i like this game and it is well worth its price. i wish you would make a sequel.
anyways, i have (1) some suggestions that should really be added, and (2) some wishes that would be great, either for this game but more likely for a sequel. the first 2 with xxx are what keeps me form playing it again
xxx (1) a button to turn off tutorials. i reinstalled and it sucks to get them again.
xxx (1) a button to turn of flavor text / historical messages (like “vena is announcing a new console for next year”). it was fun the first time. but i don’t want to read it a 5th time. it gets in the way and interrupts me. only keep the messages that enable new options (like a new console launch)
(1) BUG: after de-installing the expansion mod, i could not start the game again, i think because the savefile did not work with the original game, and it loads the latest save automatically. that is why i had to reinstall. auto-load should be disabled when the used mod is changed.
(1) a fast text option. the game development report can be speeded up by mouseclick, but the game reviews report cannot. i would like to have an option that both are always shown instantly, without any waiting. it would also be nice to have the menus pop up immediately instead of having to wait. clicking through employees to decide what i should do takes quite long.
(1) give me more information about my costs. some sort of statistic or cost reports that show my costs and where they come from (is there a monthly office cost?), this should at least show the previous month, so i can get estimate my monthly costs.
(1) same about my income. i don’t even know how much i get per sold game (maybe i could calculate it, but i didn’t), even less for console.
(1) i only played 2 full games, so maybe i lack the experience. but i always had by far too few research points, even though i focused staff training in research. the R&D seemed to not produce any significant amount of RP either (with 1M monthly and no active project).
(2) some overview about my employees would be nice (everyone in ONE table including special trainings).
(2) i hate level scaling. in this game it’s the fact that i am mostly measured against my own successes. not knowing this caused my bankrupts. it’s not a complete desaster (like it was for me in some other games, most notable TES 4 and 5), but it still sucks. it’s counter-intuitive as long as you don’t know about it, and then it’s just boring. rather the success of my games should be measured against the average market (it’s ok if this includes my own games with a significant percentage, but i should not play against myself only).
(2) due to scaling it seems almost impossible to make a good smaller game after publishing a good larger game. that sucks because it causes fan losses.
(2) computer opponents, like Biing! would be cool. someone to set the standards, like it seems to be the case with consoles. it would also add more variety, especially if those companies specialise in different type of games, and the standards are compare for each genre. you could find a market niche and be successful there.
(2) i want to set the price for my products. bad games could give positive feedback if they are cheap. great games could be more expensive (less sold games and less fans but more revenue in total). expansion pack does this, but not well. larger games should be sold at a higher price, small games at lower price. influencing the feedback from press/fans (it could be a bad game with bad rating but still be accepted because it’s cheap).
(2) i want to influence development time, other than by game size. maybe i didn’t try enough, but it seems that continuing after fixing all bugs gives so few improvements that it’s never worth it.
(2) more variety. it’s nice to have the timeline like it was in reality. but it would be more fun in the long run, to have different market shares for different platforms every time. flavor text messages could be done accordingly.
(2) in addition to the just mentioned, it might be cool to gain some expertise for a certain platform while writing games for it. this way you’d have to decide, if you want to stay on “your” platform even when the market share is low or switch to a “new” one. the licensing costs are too low to have any real impact.
(2) a little more randomness in how good a game is, and a chance to abadon development at each stage. making a 10 game should also need some luck or really long development.
(2) development for consoles should have limited options depending on the hardware.
ok, it’s a long list. i only post improvement suggestions for good games (others aren’t worth it). this is a good game, and i hope you’re not yet done patching.
by the way, i’m glad you did this DRM free and you provided a tutorial. i wouldn’t have bought the game if either of those were missing.
dance!
