Hi Tim and team!
First off, I would like to say that this game has really gobsmacked me. It’s such a simple concept, yet no two games are ever the same. Really well done guys! I’ve only had the game for just more than a week and I’ve started working through the advanced campaign. It’s easy to lose hours in this game is what I’m trying to say!
Now for my suggestions:
I get the impression that the markets are too small. It might be an idea to increase the number of sufferers of the different diseases (depending of course on the severity, flu and cough medicines are going to have a far greater market than liver disease, which is simulated already, but it’s so easy to saturate a market with only 2000 sufferers. My thinking is to have a cap at maybe 10 000? I’m not sure how that will affect calculations and thus performance).
Another idea is to have all players start with maybe one common ingredient, but the other is different for each player. Again, this is just to help with market saturation. I find that because I can pause and plan, I conquer the market for the first half of the first year and when the AI catches up, the market dies so quickly, that drugs that were turning a profit of $80 now suddenly only turn maybe $10 profit.
We are putting things out there that induce certain side effects (nausea, headaches etc)… Is it possible to simulate an effect on the market? For example (and I’ll work within the constraints of the current cures available) if all the players put out meds that induce headaches, then the market for pain killers or migraine relief goes up accordingly.
I imagine that one is able to get hold of another company’s sales results in real life. I’d rather be able to see how their drugs are affecting the market than have access to their entire balance sheet. (By this I mean being able to hover over their ratings and see what their drug is doing)
That’s pretty much it. I think the rest of the mechanics are actually really well balanced, and truth be told, the market does diversify nicely later on so that saturation does not become an issue. These are all suggestions and may conflict with design choices, so feel free to chuck them in File 13 (AKA the rubbish bin). You guys are after all in charge here!
Things I like about this game:
The music!
The machine animations!
The fact that the ingredients change look depending on how they’ve been processed and what concentration they’re at!
The tech tree!
The puzzle aspect of figuring out how best to process your ingredients!
Although I’ve harped on about market saturation, the market feels alive. It reacts well to what is being produced and I especially like the random events that increase or decrease demand for a short time.
How easy it is to repurpose old production lines or move them to a new building.
Things I don’t much like:
As stated in numerous other posts, accidental deletion. A delete tool would be really useful here.
Conveyor belts that are straight and cost full price to turn into a tee. (maybe i’m just using the tool incorrectly).
The fact that there is no machine between the Ionizer / Agglomerator and Autoclave / Cryogenic Condenser. Maybe upgraded versions of the Ionizer / Agglomerator (say when you’ve purchased 3 levels of upgrade, you can choose to change the concentration by 5 instead of 3, similar to the shaker being able to move things more than one spot).
Sorry for the long post, that’s it from me for now! Let me jump back in and carry on playing! Thanks for the awesome game guys!
Cheers!
CrzyCrg