The scope was amazing, the contrast between where you start and how it ends, the hints of disaster and questioning of your own identity. I found that it brought out the superstitious in me - I never knew why it was important to keep the fire lit and the room warm, but I made sure that it was. I didn't know what charms did, but I tended to take one with me when I went exploring.
The only slight disappointment I had with it was that I was expecting it to be much more story driven, but while there were hints of a story that emerged, I would have liked more.
Did you take builder with you when you left? Were you really part of the alien menace that strip mined the planet? Do you feel different now after having bootstrapped civilization amongst these people? Where did builder learn so much? Did anyone ever catch those creatures in the store room? Will the planet recover? What will you do next?
I too had a bit of a jaw-drop moment after I discovered the space ship and reset the game. I saw each bit of story in the more menacing light you suggest with your last-paragraph questions.
Bravo on the entire game's concept and execution. I'm excited to see what develops from this open-source phase.
> I'm excited to see what develops from this open-source phase.
I don't think he was a plan; in his blog comments, I was the only one who suggested that he put it on Github and I have no intention of making any contributions. If anyone else is moved to, there are a few ideas:
1) the obvious: bug fixes, UX improvements, clearer text.
2) modding.
He's got enough there to be used as an engine for a similar kind of game.
Adding more locations on the map, procedurally generated minimazes for caves and cities, and either throwing more things/requirements/distance between village and space ship, or even crashing with that spaceship on another planet and exploring that.. until you find another spaceship, and so on :D
Maybe you could have live competition between villages on other worlds? For example, if you and I start at the same time, we can each see the number of villagers of the other person and houses, etc. built so far.
I remember an experimental game from years ago that was essentially a dungeon crawler without the er, crawling part. That is, there was no 'space', similar to the beginning phase of this game. It was actually quite fun, and seems like it could impart some ideas for expansion in this game.
I had a great time trying to figure out whether it was worth carrying 10 rifles on an expedition or just one. Same with steel swords. I think my standard outfit ended up being one rifle (plenty of bullets) and five swords - though I'm still not sure if it makes much of a difference.
I can't imagine how long it would take to complete the game without cheating. I would manipulating the localstorage database from time to time.
Approximately 6 hours, not counting the overnight break while I slept and let it just sit there accumulating resources.
I made a lot of non-optimal decisions the first time through, though, seeing as how I had no idea where it was going. That combined with the sleeping time means I have very little idea of the minimum time required to play it straight through.
If I'm not mistaken, carrying more of the same weapon doesn't give you any benefits, it only means you get to carry less of other items. I looked at the JS code while playing and found the amount of damage each weapon does. In battle, this amount of damage was dealt when carrying multiple of the same weapon or just a single one.
Carrying one of each weapon does make a huge difference though, because you get new attack buttons.
The scope was amazing, the contrast between where you start and how it ends, the hints of disaster and questioning of your own identity. I found that it brought out the superstitious in me - I never knew why it was important to keep the fire lit and the room warm, but I made sure that it was. I didn't know what charms did, but I tended to take one with me when I went exploring.
The only slight disappointment I had with it was that I was expecting it to be much more story driven, but while there were hints of a story that emerged, I would have liked more.
Did you take builder with you when you left? Were you really part of the alien menace that strip mined the planet? Do you feel different now after having bootstrapped civilization amongst these people? Where did builder learn so much? Did anyone ever catch those creatures in the store room? Will the planet recover? What will you do next?