Wednesday 28 September 2016

Maybe Actually Going to do Something

My idle browser game is coming along. I've just redone the tech tree to look like this:


I know the resolution is too low to read, that's because, you know, no spoilers, but you can see the scope of it at the moment. I know that Civ V is a soon-to-be out-of-date reference point, but I've got a spreadsheet tracking my techs and I'm up to 38 vs. its 81. What more, 16 of my techs don't even appear in Civ V. This is partly because I start at an even earlier point in history - you get to develop tools and fire.

One thing you might be able to tell from that chart is that I think my game is breaking novel ground for an idle game - it's non-linear. You don't buy the +10% upgrade to unlock the +15% upgrade. Everything is a huge jumbled mess. Playing it I find myself really struggling to decide which technology I need more urgently.

It's not all that playable right now because you are going to hit a brick wall after several days. Not because you've done everything but because doing anything further becomes next to impossible. I need to time out the pre-prestige game to a couple of weeks, and then get the prestige system working the way I want it to.

This is what I did when I was a kid. I sat around and designed games that no one would ever play but me. Then I played them a bit and got back to what I really wanted to do - design more. Back then they were written out on paper and mostly played with six-sided dice. Now it's javascript, but the point is basically the same. I'm not sure if you'll ever get to play this, but I'm sure making it.

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