Greed, Gluttony, and everything IMPbetween

Gain Jam Gain Jam 8/2022
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These responses so far have been insightful! … And frightful…

D-Does anyone use the Prestige mechanic? And how do you all approach this reset mechanic?

As in do you wait for a certain amount of souls, or do you decide on a milestone before prestiging? I guess the better question would be “when do you decide to prestige?”

I’m feeling as though I may have horrendously overlooked and underestimated the “Optimizing the fun out of the game” rule 0_0

Does Auto Rank and High Rank Imps not help out at all? (High Rank Imps unlocks access to higher ranking imps up to 6 iirc) I definitely think I need to rethink the mechanics a little and prevent players from getting carpal tunnel and achy fingies from trying to just play it until you get lots of royals. :thinking: I had an idea to add complexity to royals by requiring their coin for ranking up to the next rank, but I think I really neglected early game progress and making that easier on the player to get to late game in the form of click intensity :Y But I’m still curious about my questions since my method of easement on that front may have been meager in the larger scheme of things…

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At first I saw it like Cookie Clicker prestige where the idea is if I’m doing this then I’ve performed exceptionally well. But I quickly realized this was the wrong attitude. Then I treated it as a tool of overcoming my current roadblock, whether it’s coins, brimstone, or just general generation rate. It helps that the important early game conquering upgrades in prestige are incredibly cheap so I felt that was completely intentional.

I prioritized increasing the amount of Brimstone you got per Imp, allowing me to summon more imps more easily after dismissing expensive to revive ones and then starting brimstone so I could get another imp quickly if my first three imps rolled badly before I could get the money train rolling into terminal velocity.

Auto Rank was REALLY important as once money wasn’t an object I was just dumping it into Imps to get them to pre-Brimstone-needed levels which dismissed better to generate Brimstone. As for Higher Rank Imps, that upgrade was nice to get past rank 1 quickly to save time (since rank 2 imps could be Auto Ranked and also were the minimum to start generating money for early game) but since Brimstone is infinitely more valuable than money at that point in the game, any rank purchase past two felt foolish and unnecessary.

And I hate to say it, but Royals in this game’s current state aren’t worth it. The amount of souls you get by making them aren’t as much as getting a full squad of pre-royal Imps. Or at least the amount of work it takes to make them royals doesn’t feel worth the paltry soul increase this provides. Once you hit late game and your general brimstone generation is high and stable enough, I was going into Royals more, but the cons vastly outweighed the pros.

To summarize, the current version of this game favors a speedy burn where you force yourself against an obstacle until it relents. And if it doesn’t, then prestiging to increase your velocity (resource generation rate/stability) is done until you break through. Money has very little value once you either have enough artifacts or prestige upgrades meaning the benefits of Royals (money generation, slightly higher soul on prestige, a King Coin which is only for double money chance) vastly outweigh the cons early game when they could be considered more valuable (brimstone investment which can only be done through Imp dismissal at very low rates, sheer amount of effort and general investment too).

However, as I said in my review/feedback post earlier, the game works pretty well as it currently is. This version creates an interesting feeling where you’re struggling to overcome barriers. But eventually you’ll overpower them and discover a new barrier to progress. I realize this probably wasn’t what you intended, but it does work.

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Oh, also rapid clicking does NOT work early game. The cards are heavily against you for that style of gameplay. Rapid clicking is when your money generation is high enough that pre-royal imp revival cost is never a problem. So very much mid to late game.

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The best time to prestige felt like it depended on the stage of the game you were at.

At the start of the game, the best strategy seemed to be to do duties until your starting imps died and you could no longer afford the the revival cost, dismiss them, then prestige. At the very beginning, this usually meant as soon as the cost went up to 400 gold. I dumped a couple levels into duty gold which helped to let the imps last longer, but the main focuses were dismissal brimstone and starting level.

Once I started getting enough brimstone from dismissing the first three imps to refill the board and the money to revive becomes a non-issue, I basically prestiged “when I felt like it.” Sometimes as soon as I got an imp to the point it cost brimstone to revive, and sometimes after looping through my highest starting level to that point a few times looking for crowns. However, eventually I started prestiging as soon as I summoned 8 imps - that seemed like the fastest way to generate souls. Upgrades were focused on capping out starting level, starting up auto level and brimstone revival cost, and of course, the all-important brimstone dismissal.

Brimstone dismissal is so important because after so many levels, the reward for dismissal starts to outweigh the initial cost of summoning. Once you reach a certain point the game changes entirely, where you have 7 imps as high a level as you can afford, while you spam summon and dismiss a level 6 imp to generate infinite souls and brimstone. From there on, I prestiged every ~2000 souls earned, maxing out auto level and brimstone revival and putting points into cheap stuff because “why not.” But the focus was still brimstone dismissal.

Eventually, you reach a point where you get hundreds / thousands of brimstone per level six dismissal and can easily afford King Imps, and at that point I considered the game ‘won.’ The idea with the royal imps and coins was definitely cool, but I found the rewards for it were totally worthless by the time I started getting the coins.

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I definitely used prestige, but mainly for increasing gold and brimstone gains to make an individual run less of a crapshoot as to whether it lasts longer than just a handful of imps.

I didn’t find High Rank Imps useful, myself. As others have mentioned once you’ve got a couple of prestiges under the belt brimstone is the main limiter, not gold, and it’s essentially trading brimstone for less gold (and clicks). Brimstone is quickly the main limiter not because of summoning, but the high brimstone revive costs at the high ranks.

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I still used rapid clicking early game myself, as while the cards are heavily against you my first several runs are basically ‘burn through resources as quickly as possible, then prestige’.

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I really appreciate all the responses and learning where the meta of the game actually lies. Full disclosure is that I hadn’t fully played the game myself, only parts to ensure that they were functioning. Though I still have questions as I could have borked up some mechanics.

In the current jam version, when prestiging with a royal imp to obtain their coin, did the “Slot Machine” unlock for you? And if so, what’s your opinion about it?

Also, how many of you knew that the red/green bar represented their chance of success along with their “experience points”? I know it might be an arbitrary question, but I’m still curious if some thought success/failure was completely random, or if they understood that it stood for success rate?

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@InfiniteFluffDerg
The upgrades weren’t fine tuned as well as I’d like them as you and most players could probably tell that their incremental rate is pretty linear. But I’m glad I got the early cheap game to be an easy hill, as it could have been pretty bad with large brick wall costs. I wanted players to mostly feel like they could make progress even after a short run.

Brimstone was intended to be a “hard to obtain” resource… Buuut as I mentioned with small linear increments of cost, I suppose I made the soul purchasing power of Brimstone bonuses too cheap.

I know the game doesn’t explain it well, but any time it refers to COIN it means the Royal Coins you get, not GOLD which is money. The Double Coin Chance to clarify is the chance that Royal Coins on prestiging are doubled, so you increase your chances to get x2 King Coins instead of just x1, and it extends to all Royals.

Though I’d have to agree with your evaluation, that as it stands now Royals are more trouble than they’re worth. Though I got a couple new ideas for why you may want to obtain Royals besides their Coins.

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@noneexpect
Whoops! I suppose that loop hole needs to be patched as that’s not intended. Summoning/Dismissing rank 6s for infinite supplies was not intended X’D Then again, my fault for not giving thorough testing of multiple mechanics and how they relate to one another ^^; And obtaining ~2000+ souls each run?! I was originally going to have 20 stages of fat that increment by 100 souls, and you’d of cleared it within one run XD

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@Cordite
Based on everyone else’s mentioning too, gold seemed to be meaningless at a point with how easy it started to come by. Perhaps I should tweak gold costs a little and see if gold becomes more valuable :thinking: I should really use my Associates in Mathematics for something like this XD

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When judging is over, I’ll take time to try to rebalance things and flesh out mechanics that were dropped and/or minimally implemented. I think I want to take it more into a strategic idle/clicker, as I really enjoyed the early game micro decisions of “should I wait for these imps to tick then try, or see if I get lucky and go with it” or “which imp should I revive first?”. I do want to continue the trend of “unlock a new thing when least expected and expand game play”, as it allows players to ease into the expanding mechanics that build and play with other pre-existing or even create new goals of play.

One other big feature I’d like to add is the settings menu, but also if accessed from the title screen then it would have a clear save file option as it could help me (and play testers) quickly refresh from the start in case of major changes that old save data could just obliterate with +2k souls at the ready XD

Again, I have been greatly appreciative of the feedback as it lets me learn where the game’s current meta lies and where its has the most problems/weakest features. Thank you all <3

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If you do tweak gold costs, I’d suggest from the upgrade front as opposed to the cost front, as without a beginning pile of relevant upgrades gold can be quite limiting indeed. (Though luck is a factor, given the way duties work.)

I did realize the red/green was a success chance, but I hadn’t made the connection with it being an experience bar too. I noticed it was always really low after going up a tier, but didn’t put two and two together.

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I actually thought the experience bar WAS a success meter at first. I thought that I’d need to wait a while to improve it because I was overworking the imp or something. When it didn’t naturally increase, I considered it an experience bar fully.

The slot machine didn’t unlock for me either. Though to be honest, it would be hard to justify using it when coins are easily got by mid game and brimstone can be reliably earned by mid-late. Similarly, adjusting these values should be done with caution since it feels like it may severely tank the game’s speed. Though I guess it may also push the game closer to how you see it over how we ultimately did.

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@Cordite
I am honestly thinking of tweaking both costs and upgrades. Currently the costs are calculated as (rank^2)*100 which sounds fine, but it barely ramps up past 5 digits which at that point is meager compared to the income. I want to incorporate more idle play and create a bit more ceiling to push through. I’m thinking (2^rank)*100 would work better, since A) the costs won’t change too heavily in the first few ranks, and B) it gets more into 6 digits near higher ranks. I was originally thinking the 2^rank but thought it might incline to fast, but in the game’s current implementation that hardly seems like a challenge with how money starts getting away from you.

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@InfiniteFluffDerg
The slot machine wouldn’t offer gold, but more permanent/“temporary” goods such as crowns, souls, and artifacts. And it would be used to introduce a new mechanic to give reason for playing it. Though time constraints would of had the new mechanic snipped anyways. I’m just sad that a mechanic I added didn’t get to see the light of day :c (I almost feel like my first game jam entry, but this time it’s late game content so I’m not that pained by it)

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I am also trying to decide how to approach Imps such that they can do “more” or even have more interesting play options. Let me run this idea through:

You have a new imp type that you can choose to summon that has more “permanence” as in their stats are consistent between runs. However, their cost of summoning requires a little more brimstone than normal. They do not perform duties, rather they increase in rank by sacrificing imps of equal rank to improve them. Their skill bar (the success/failure/experience/green/red bar) would be tied to gold ticks which have a chance to double the income based on the success rate. They can be dismissed anytime, but can only be summoned once per run, and dismissal wouldn’t reward brimstone as usual. The reason you’d want these investment type imps is once they get to royal status (and royals are given more buff), they’ll have stronger/unique buffs that normal royals wouldn’t have.

This idea would give a reason to having a customized imp (from looks to powers). Maybe add a feature where their suit and element is determined by the imps you sacrifice for it (something like how Chaos in Sonic games gain stats depending on what you give them), making a stronger decisional impact on how you want your permaimp to function.

And I’m aware that implementing these permaimps in its current state may spell disaster with its current underlying problems of how it treats imps. I was using the mola mola mechanic as inspiration for the “progress through failure” challenge card, which after replaying a bit of again, I made a more “unfriendly” user experience as it utilized progress through failure as a risk/reward rather than a sole progression mechanic. Perhaps I’ll take up that idea of giving the option to have a group of imps perform a task which yields a higher success rate, but conversely the imp can go solo for that risk/reward if all group tasks are being attended to. Perhaps I’ll take inspiration from Space Leaper: Cocoon where you have prerequisite needs for certain tasks and bonus loot depending on your unit’s attributes, leaning in on if you want to try building for solo burn play or group task play.

How does this task system sound? Any other suggestions on how I could do it another way? Or is it at least a step in the right direction for possibly making the game less click heavy. :thinking:

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First Round Scores

Jux Score

Category Total
Game Runs: 50.0
Use of Theme: 50.0
Art: 6.1
Writing: 3.5
Music & Sound: 5.3
Mechanics: 4.2
Game Concept 4.0
Use of Fetish 4.7
Judge Preference: 2.1
Wild Cards Attempted: 3.0
Admin Wild Card: 2.0
Patreon Wild Card: 3.7
Community Wild Card: 1.0
Total: 139.6

Alex Score

Category Total
Game Runs: 50.0
Use of Theme: 50.0
Art: 7.0
Writing: 6.0
Music & Sound: 7.0
Mechanics: 7.0
Game Concept 5.5
Use of Fetish 5.0
Judge Preference: 8.0
Wild Cards Attempted: 3.0
Admin Wild Card: 4.0
Patreon Wild Card: 4.0
Community Wild Card: 5.0
Total: 161.5

Roops Score

Category Total
Game Runs: 50.0
Use of Theme: 50.0
Art: 6.0
Writing: 5.0
Music & Sound: 6.0
Mechanics: 5.0
Game Concept 5.0
Use of Fetish 5.0
Judge Preference: 0.0
Wild Cards Attempted: 3.0
Admin Wild Card: 2.0
Patreon Wild Card: 2.0
Community Wild Card: 2.0
Total: 141.0

Final Score: 442.1

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