A fun game!
Early game is entertaining. Crops grow quickly and you are constantly getting new crops and buildings to use those crops with, so it's engaging as you explore the mechanics. There's not much of a tutorial but the game is adequately intuitive that you can figure things out. UI elements were designed with care (a very buggy interactions but not gamebreaking). As the game progresses it becomes more of an idle game, but for the first GOOD while it's not very idley, things move pretty fast! I really enjoyed balancing locations of things to keep efficiency up. Is you want a dopamine hit number-go-up game for a few hours of engagement, it's worth the handful of bucks!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Okay, now for my issues with the game. I still very much enjoyed it, but developer has work to do for some big frustrations I had.
The little guys system sucks. Little guys do your tasks. You make more by investing a resource, but it costs exponentially more every time (starting with small increments). Each type of guy shared the same exponential pool.
So if you want to upgrade to a different type of guy, you have to remove your previous ones and lose all of their levels if you don't want to suffer EXTREME costs. The game seems to really want to cap you out in the 100ish area, so if you reach later "guys", you'll have to destroy all of your guys to switch to them. That... feels bad. I wanted to make some kale and cabbage guys, but it was super expensive, so I destroyed almost my entire assemblage of birch and oak... only to discover that birch and oak are better??? My kale and cabbage guys move incredibly slowly, even at level 30! Why are they WORSE than the birch and oak I kept? I used an exploit to get 190 little guys, and they STILL aren't enough for me to use 1/3 of the total area of the game and keep up with production in lategame, with slow to grow crops. I'm restricting my area so much because kale and cabbage guys just... can't carry anything fast enough, while the 20 birch and oak I kept fly around. The kale and cabbage ones have BETTER numbers!
Just let us spend a resource to change the type of existing guys, or better yet make each little guy type exist on it's own exponential curve to remove decision regret and encourage diversification of little guys, so people don't end up with a crappy monotype like me.
Can the guys recognize that they are standing BESIDE a storage bank and drop their stuff off a little more often? I see my guys carry 10 items across the world to grab an 11th too often. Make task assignment prioritize proximity more, I kept seeing guys get assigned to buildings across the map when there were things to do right beside them still.
The autoleveling is bad. It's inconsistent between types, and you have to set it manually per guy which... is so laborious and I have no idea what will be worth it for a guy until they are already level 30 and it will cost millions and hours to redo my guys.
Same with the priorities, I can't keep up with production so I end up totally neglecting the bottom two on the list, maybe some randomness could be added so SOME buildings get handled and SOME weeds get pulled.
Eggs lock up a guy unless you grab the egg? That requires active play, not really idley. Plus, you have to FIND them and that can be tough, especially if they are in your tree farm.
Fishing... why? I played two fishing minigames total, I think I only ever saw trash, and I bought autofishing before I even really understood how it worked. I barely engaged with it at all, which is a shame. Could have been more interesting. But really, there's no reason to use it. I haven't seen a single use for fishing resources.
Which, why not? Why are the progress goals only crops, juices, jams, and jellies? You have more stuff in the game. Engage with it! I have been collecting honey, sap, fish, vinegar, eggs, flour, etc. in massive quantities, and if I've used any of it I haven't noticed at all. Think the only reason to do any of it is to make pies for achievements?
Endgame, the cycle reaches a really lame point to extend things out. So each levelup you get a new crop, and later in the game you only sometimes need to use that crop for the NEXT levelup, you can use previous crops (you know, crops you may have already had growing). But in endgame, more and more frequently the next levelup is based on processed tree produce. So, you have to plant the trees, wait 20+ minutes for them to grow, then wait for their produce so you can start the juicers to make juice, then wait for the juicers to finish so you can start the cooking stations to make jelly, THEN you can leave and idle the game. And because trees produce forever and can easily bog down your capacity, you don't want to plant too many, so accelerating this by planting more (they are expensive) will end up HURTING you unless you destroy them. I mean, I got the lemon tree, then I was asked for 100 lemon juice. I got it, instantly got the next 2 levels... and I'm asked for 350 lemon jelly? OH GREAT, maybe I SHOULD have planted a ton of lemon trees and destroyed them afterward! (Which is what I did, spent 200k to just get lemons for specifically this level because I was JUST given the seeds and haven't built a reserve yet)
Speaking of endgame, there's nothing to do. I know it's an idle game, but I bought everything, money is no object, and I'm just waiting for a tree to grow to get some lemon juice. I ran out of content like fifteen levels ago. Using the exact same setup, equipment hasn't changed, seeders are the same, dudes can't keep up so I'm using a fraction of the world and trying to consense everything and cover the world in storage containers to try to get them to drop things off faster. All I've done to engage with the game the past ten levels is set up my juicers and cooking stations to run. That's been the entire game for me, set a seeder for the new crop, wait for trees and juice. I wish the game ended 15 levels ago, it's been a slog. I haven't upgraded anything in ages, no cool buffs or perks or interactions.
Get rid of the 10k poke achievement. I used a macro and it took forever at the max my OS/your game even allowed. Don't make cheating with external tools the only way to 100% your game without getting an RSI.
Revisit the balance. Look at the first 4 crops.
Cost Sell Yield Profit per plant Grow Time Profit per Minute
Barley 2 3 1 1 25 2.4
Romaine 3 6 1 3 45 4
Whoa, almost a full double from crop 1 to crop 2!
Potato 4 3 3.5ish 6.5ish 75 5.2
Still an increase! More profit per plant, more profit per minute nice!
Leek 6 8 1 2 100 1.25
Wha... what?
Am I missing something here? Is this an intentional part of the game, making players think more intelligently about their crop usage? That's fine and all, but when the number of harvests and regrows are confusing to track (how long does a regrow take? What about a reharvest? How many do I get again? It doesn't say!) And yields are TOTALLY opaque to the player, so being intelligent is tricky! I think I ended up growing sunflower seeds to make money for the entire duration I NEEEDED money in the game. They just produced an insane net profit and generated value so quickly that nothing else mattered. They sold high, a ton were produced... I only stopped making them because they overwhelmed my guys' ability to pick them! But if I wanted money, nothing else mattered. Just one small area of sunflowers, easy for the pathfinding algorithm to handle, nobody needs to go anywhere but here to make money. Minimal planting, just harvest and carry. And thank god, because all of the crops after that were difficult to figure out! Is tea 3 regrows or 2? 7 harv
