Bytecollector

I "do not recommend" it in the sense that I am almost complete neutral on this game. But, being neutral, I think that implies I do not recommend it. It's a fun concept and I appreciate that, but it's not very interesting. Drawing circles is an absolute nightmare on your wrist as soon as you realize small constant circles is the best approach. Luckily, there is an option to replace the circle drawing with auto-small-circles. But I can't help but feel like that's a good symptom of the game's core problems. Most, almost all, of the upgrades seem to arrive too late. Once you get the vortex, almost nothing else matters. You get the vortex at about the halfway point, so that invalidates about 30-40% of the upgrades. One in particular that stood out was the "field appears that doubles the value of bytes inside it"... but the vortex pulls everything to the center of the screen, so the field is useful about 5% of the time. The "Reese" helper is useful for the first 10% of the game. In the end, it becomes "hold cursor at the center of the screen and automatically collect bytes as the vortex pulls them in", so complete inaction for about 30 minutes, and then the game ends with a non-ending. It's almost fun, but just not quite.

The idea of drawing to collect things is neat, but done horribly. The reason for that is this: * There is no "draw this way to get rewards". There need to be a push for player to do the drawing instead of auto draw which is what the game is all about. The idea is thrown out after a couple of levels when you release there is no point in doing it manually. Due to this, the game basically becomes generic basic idle clicker. * Current system is either draw full screen or go auto-draw. There is nothing more. This gets tyring quickly and the wrist starts to hurt. Next things is there is 0 choice in upgrades. It is very obvious which upgrades you need to pick if you are given 2 or 3 choices. The reason for this, is that the rest of the upgrades will not push you further at all. There is a progression wall somewhere in the first half of the game which take around 5 minutes to go through with a lot of pain. Last, you get the vortex and this game becomes: Point mouse in the middle of the screen -> Wait until you die -> Upgrade -> Repeat. That is half of the total game time I bet. While the game looks visually appealing, the gameplay is actually horrible and the idea of the game is thrown out completely.

Bytecollector dürfte eigentlich keinen Spass machen. Es ist grafisch superbieder, mit dem wohl eintönigsten Gameplay überhaupt: Man zieht Kreise um geometrische Formen, um sie einzusammeln. Völlig blödsinnig, völlig belanglos. Und mein Handgelenk hasst mich dafür, dass ich es trotzdem gespielt habe. Womit wir beim entscheidenden Punkt sind: Ich habe das Spiel gespielt. Und entgegen allen Wahrscheinlichkeiten habe ich sogar Spass gehabt. Wie kommt das? Kurz gesagt: Das Spiel schafft es, mit minimalsten Mitteln einen erstaunlich guten Hook zu schaffen. Man zieht Kreise mit der Maus und sammelt damit Dreiecke (Bytes), bis die Energie ausgeht, die man für das Kreiseziehen verbraucht. Mit den gesammelten Bytes lassen sich Upgrades kaufen, u.a. auch andere, wertvollere Formen (Kilobytes, Megabytes usw.), womit man wiederum noch teurere Upgrades freischalten kann, bis man alles freigeschalten hat und das Spiel endet. Klingt belanglos und ist es irgendwie auch. Aber das Spiel erschafft einen tollen Sog und ist ziemlich perfekt balanciert. Immer wenn man denkt, jetzt beginnt der Grind, kommt das nächste Upgrade um die Ecke und zündet nochmal so richtig. Und so sass ich mehrmals da, dachte „jetzt höre ich dann auf, mein Handgelenk braucht Pause“ ... und spielte dann doch weiter, bis ich nach etwa anderthalb Stunden das Spiel abgeschlossen hatte. Dabei hilft auch der gute, stimmungsvolle Soundtrack. Und selbst die biedere Grafik erweist sich als zweckmässig und funktional. Nur gegen Ende wird das Ganze deutlich zu bunt, zu blinkend und zu unübersichtlich. Aber das ist verschmerzbar. Wirklich schade ist nur, dass die Entwickler es verpasst haben, dem Ganzen irgendeine Form von Story oder Setting zu geben. Gerade das Ende ist komplett nichtssagend. Das Spiel ist einfach fertig. Selbst ein noch so billiger Rahmen hätte hier viel ausgemacht. Fazit: Bytecollector ist definitiv kein Spiel, das man gespielt haben muss. Aber für rund 1.5 Stunden bietet es erstaunlich viel Sog, erstaunlich viel Spielfluss und erstaunlich viel Unterhaltung. Wer einen unkomplizierten kleinen Zeitfresser sucht, darf Bytecollector ruhig mal eine Chance geben.

Great way to kill some time, I only wish it had more idle functionality.

It's ~90 minutes of drawing circles; just engaging enough to keep you going. Overall it's not much (aside from a visual overload), but I liked how it ends, so it's a "good enough" from me.

Really fun acid trip of an incremental, would recommend given its unique mechanic and cheap price.

Takes a little bit over an hour to complete. Worth the 2€. The only problem I have with it: My wrist hurts from drawing circles over and over again.

Love the manual drawing portion to capture, game was good enough for less than 2bucks.

Something that only takes an hour and a half to complete was quite fun. Was sitting here playing it while talking to my mates. A good game to play when bored. Normally i give suggestions on where the game can improve but giving the fact and knowing what the game is, it doesn't need any,

Interesting gimmick which doesnt overstay its welcome, pacing is decent and my condolences to those who were playing pre-autodraw patch. But post-patch its quite good. 1 thing that i didnt enjoy is trial & error'ing the path to the next X-byte upgrade because thats basically the only thing that i needed to progress after reaching midgame +for some reason this game went on 61% sale, so it was basically free