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Agree with the below commenter: the width thing is really messing up not just the scrubber machine maneuvering, but the automated cleaners too. Narrow areas just get ignored if you have enough width upgrades. Especially egregious when the player's handheld scrubber doesn't get any upgrades

Thanks, it certainly is clearer! Also, it's a bit hard to get certain synergies when every / almost every medal stacks seemingly without limit and the pool rarely gets smaller

Might be worth mentioning that you can only have one [Space] ability at a time, and that it's gone after you use it.

Hey... can you tell me why the Turn Right command is on the left, and the Turn Left command is on the right in the UI?

Accidentally hit "Open tree" when I meant to close the tree preview window, I didn't have anything to buy yet and it wouldn't let me back out, so... my run got reset without any benefit

Where did you get this idea?
First assistant only targets cells that have 1 clue in them. Only home looks at the entire box / row / column and checks if any number has only one clue in the entire group, regardless of whether that clue is alone in its cell.

Reserving some cards for the full game is fine. Keeping the ability to upgrade obtained cards with gold beyond Level 13 would be great. I haven't tried, but I'm assuming it's possible to complete the entire book of Moby-Dick in the demo? If not, it should be made available as well.

TL;DR: This game removes the ability to purchase upgrades with gold at Level 13. Pages can still be invested and withdrawn. Please treat this as a semi-serious, semi-lighthearted rant.

Devs who purposely softlock the demo at an arbitrary point in an effort for players to pursue the full version will always be the biggest mystery to me, but this is a new thing entirely: taking away one of the main means of progression and improvement. I have to say, it is just as infuriating.

I was just getting into the swing of it when - oops! A major barrier to progress. Yes, I'm aware pages can still be used, but it seems much slower than using gold.

You noted "Buying upgrades is part of the full game" as if that's any credible defense; it's clearly part of the demo as well, at least until your mystifying decision to interrupt players who are engaged with your concept.

Is this an elaborate metaphor for how the proprietor will chase you from a bookstore if you spend too long reading a single book without buying it? The book in question being Moby-Dick, of course.

Just to inform you in case you may be unaware: many players pursue games with a completionist mindset and the same is true for demos and prototypes. Just ask around; if a concept is compelling enough (just as I found yours to be in this demo, or I wouldn't be making this comment), it's not uncommon for players to exhaust the game's content (e.g. all upgrades, all levels) even when they're aware that they have reached the limit for the demo.

Thanks for the prompt response and update! The issues are gone. I thought I'd have to start over from scratch, haha.
One last minor observation: When you purchase certain upgrades (not sure if it's like this for all of them, I noticed it on the 2nd movement speed upgrade), the buy button is still visible but greyed out and has a cost of -1 credits.

Seems great so far, but how do you swap gadgets? Mine are stuck to the first two, the upwards boost and the repulsor.

Also, not sure whether it's an issue on my end, but my game freezes when I have enough money for a rewind and click the "◎ 750,000" button on the upgrade menu.

The price doesn't update while the confirmation screen is open so I can't spend to get below 750,000, open the screen, then earn to meet the requirement.

Edit: Now my save won't load after opening a duplicate tab of the game to get some screenshots. It's a permanent "Loading..." screen.
Firefox 157.0.1 (aarch64), Mac OS

Yeah, the no text condition for whatever jam you're submitting this to is really hurting players' ability to make meaningful decisions. Is this upgrade going to cost 50 fish, or 20? How many fish have I already invested in this upgrade? Does it even do what I think it will?

What's the benefit of entering the portal after the superboss?

Like what others have said, spinners don't seem very effective at encouraging merges and achieving higher tiers is a slog. Most games using this mechanic usually avoid the grind by preventing lower tier particles from being spawned, e.g. when the player buys the upgrade to spawn tier 3 particles, tier 1 and 2 particles stop being produced, and all particles of these tiers on the field transform to tier 3.

My first suggestion would be to present the player with an upgrade choice at the very beginning, ESPECIALLY because this is an autobattler. If the player loses the very first battle without any input or meaningful choice, then they'll wonder what the point even was (was that character I chose just not good enough? Should I stop playing if I'll just lose without doing anything? etc.)

Is there meant to be a HUGE timewall grinding for the final meditation that speeds up time, or am I doing something wrong? I've already purchased everything else.

It seems like your standard arena shooter, but there are a few points of improvement:
- Holding the mouse button to purchase upgrades seems a bit unintuitive
- Why is there so much dead space in the screen where you can go to the upgrade screen or choose a level? Other incrementals don't have a hub area like this. You should only have it if navigating around a world is central to the gameplay, i.e. there should be more to do on that screen to justify the use of space
- It's not clear whether the screen lightening when you approach an anglerfish on Level 3 is anything other than a visual effect

Ok, so there's no roguelite aspect. There's no progression between runs, and no improvement. This is just a score-chasing game. Kindly remove the Roguelite tag to prevent confusion

How exactly is this a Roguelite?

Oh, I guess I didn't try the scroll wheel on my mouse because it's faulty, haha. I tried to scroll on a macOS trackpad. Using Firefox browser

A decent idea and execution, but I don't like that the upgrade menu doesn't respond to scrolling, or that clicking and dragging counts as pressing a button, so you might accidentally purchase something while trying to see what the other upgrades are.

Thanks! I'm back from a complete run. A few things I noticed:

- If you have multiple items that consume the same item(s) onscreen (shop or post-level), you can take all of them if you have enough choices left (e.g. the Personal Computer abilities, elemental combos)

- The domino effect of hammer activations seems to break the hint system. Only noticed this with Mjolnir on the final boss

- Might just be me, but I had severe lag clicking on highlighted ambiguous tiles on the final boss

- By around halfway through the second floor in most runs, I'm starting to drown in money lol

Just played a run in which I got all the items, quit after the third boss because I thought it was gonna go on forever... then I read the description and found out there's a 3rd tier of hammer, and the fourth floor is the last one. Noooo! 😂 Guess I'm going back in again, haha

I like this! Might be worth having some indication that an item is part of a larger "set" / needed for other items so players don't immediately balk at the "No effect" text and disregard the item.

The white on white made things a bit glaring and indistinct, especially where precision was needed, like towards the end of the beginning level. Also, it was a bit hard to figure out how all the rooms were connected.

In that room with the grassy floor and doors in each of the four walls, one of the black walls had a door that led nowhere, just a gray screen, then I was taken back to the grass room after a short delay.

Unless I'm mistaken, you can get softlocked if you don't have enough money for the spike bounce by the time you get to the purple area, and if you've collected all the other colors. Either that or the purple area demands platforming skills that are WAY beyond anything that was introduced in the earlier parts of the game.

This is great! It feels good to work out card synergies and personal strategies. I will say the red cards seemed like too harsh trade-offs / not immediately attractive for me to be comfortable using them, though.

I also noticed a bug: You can drag transient runes to the top card in the discard pile, but when they're drawn again they won't have the transient rune.

Now merging beryllium seems to make the game hang; the two lithium ions just freeze there and everything stops moving. Aborting experiment does nothing.

Edit: This was after playing up to Boron then loading the game up again after the latest update. Wiping save data seems to solve the problem.

No, clicking on anything doesn't work. Clicking anywhere on the screen doesn't tip the dominoes and none of the buttons work anymore. This is with 1.2.1. Resetting the game seems to solve it but now I've gone and wasted my time and discarded my game for your game-breaking bug, so I won't be looking at the new content, let alone playing further, anymore. Maybe at least try and replicate the bug yourself before you tell people to throw their progress away next time.

After the update, clicking "Push" does nothing and the UI becomes unresponsive.

The gameplay is quite frustrating, from the near-misses between atoms of the same tier to collisions between atoms of different tiers getting in the way of reactions, the inability to extend the duration of the experiment, the absurd RNG to get boron (and the even harsher grind to get carbon), the fact that it costs several non-hydrogen atoms to get even a single one in the field...

Stuck on the Unity preloader screen. I can't play this.

Several design choices that make this a frustrating experience:
- It's possible to get a x1 multiplier for the red dominoes, making it useless when it appears
- Auto-cursors can't be set to add red or black dominoes last, reducing efficiency and yield
- Dominoes can overlap with the UI elements
- Unclear at a glance whether progressing further will yield more prestige currency after reaching the prestige threshold, which is a staple of this genre
- In the points calculation, black dominoes' effects are shown as "^1" regardless of value
- The prestige button can be spam-clicked, causing the VFX to repeat
- Balancing issues others have raised
- No indication of end of content

日本語の苦手ってすみません。「５能力MAXでクリア」の実績はちょっとおかしい。MAXとクリアの後、あの実績がない。
After clearing a stage with 5 abilities maxed, I did not get the "Ultimate Warrior" achievement

Unless I'm missing something, WAY too much clicking in terms of upgrades

Cool concept, but could be better if the speed upgrades were given earlier. Gave up after getting one red octagon for the last design, way too slow.