Idle Galaxy

TLDR; You feel like you are just treading water and for no good reason. So this is a tough one, I like idle games, indie devs, and (to be fair) the price is super low (always glad to pay for a game without a bunch of in game currency crap) but when it comes down to it... I just don't enjoy the day-one version of Idle Galaxy. -The graphics are really nothing to write home about. It's a lot of bright oval shapes on a boring black screen that bounce around. I was expecting something more interesting with galaxies swirling around or even something closer to the loading screen in No Man's Sky where you see stars going by and there is a ton of color and flavor to the universe. This is just bright dots bouncing in the center outwards it's not super inspiring. -BGM is fine! No complaints. -I absolutely hate the font used; I get it. It looks space-y. It looks awful, too. -The UI for the upgrades is pretty boring, the entire thing could use more polish to be perfectly honest. -The gameplay: You start at a level 1 galaxy and each time you click the number goes up by 1. So you think, OK, after upgrading your "energy" and "critical hits" the number will go up faster and higher. They sort of do... but it doesn't go up the way it's described on the upgrade page I have no clue how "particles per click" is calculated. You quickly hit a cap on how high the number can go and you have to "evolve" so you do. I suspect that every evolution increases the energy required to get the number to go up by 1 so every time you hit the soft cap and evolve you feel like you get set back... and not in a fun way like when you prestige in other idlers where you get tangible benefits. I'd rather have the number go up faster as I buy upgrades then to feel like I am accomplishing nothing. The perks are all just modifiers for the same upgrade options nothing interesting to buy at all, and again it all feels useless when each evolution you feel like you are back to square one. I got to galaxy level 10 before losing interest, Idle Galaxy has a ways to go before it's really worth the time. I think the game page description of what you get is a bit over hyped for what is here. It does say at galaxy level 20 the game play loop changes but I'll probably never get there as galaxies 1-19 just aren't worth it. If the 2nd phase is where the real fun and beautiful game play is at... maybe start there instead? I may never know.

Edit: STAY AWAY!!!! Came back to check to see if any changes have been implemented that were reccomended by many of the players but it appears nothing new. Also the dev has deleted all discussion posts with anything constructive. I've been trying to give this game a fair shot but in its current state I would not suggest this game to anyone looking for their new idler. The first few hours are ok, per normal idlers you make some quick progress at first. However eventually I realized that as you progress further, the game actually penalizes you for not fully upgrading on the previous levels. As an example, it used to only take you 20 minutes to accumulate 1000 currency, on the next level it may take you 1hr to accumulate 1000 resources. As far as I can tell, there is no way to go back to a previous level to farm faster so now you're effectively stuck in a catch up system. In regards to the upgrade system, there's no actual numbers to determine how much damage my clicks are doing so there's no way to even determine if some of the values are even working. I'm going to give this game a few more days and get past the first 20 levels and see if there's additional content. EDIT: I made it to level 19, and the upgrade system bugged out on me. I was farming my primary click damage and got to level 245 and then the total energy bank went to -21billion. It would take me weeks if not a month to dig myself out of this hole so it would be better to restart, however I don't know if this same bug would just reoccur. Would not rec this game to anyone unless some major content and mechanic changes are implemented.

The game balance is awful. Linear power *decrease*, exponential cost increase. As you progress levels, you gain *less* per click, but the cost of upgrades stays the same. So if you skip a level without upgrading everything, you are heavily penalised. There is no way to click while the upgrade screen is open meaning upgrading is incredibly tedious. The idle functionailty is practically non existent. You get auto-clickers, but they fire off every few seconds with a fraction of the effect of clicking. You not only need an autoclicker to progress, even with one, progress becomes tedious. The game does not create a decent dopamine feedback loop which is basically an idle game's one task. The game should not have been released in its current state.