Trainatic

I was looking forward to this release, but in its current state I cannot recommend the game, especially at the current price point without a discount. For a dollar or two I'd let some of these be looked over, but as is some need addressing.

Larger issues:

- No Windows icon for the game exe. This bug has been patched!
- All upgrades are numbers based (+0.1 of x, +5 of y), but the game itself shows no stats at all, your fuel is just a meter with no number attached, your wood collected is a meter with no number attached. It makes the player feel entirely disconnected from what is actually happening.
- As a follow on to this, the value of numbers is absolutely meaningless. What does "+10 cooldown speed" mean? Is that 10%, 10 seconds, 10 as some arbitrary point value? What is even the base cooldown speed of this effect? The explosive train upgrade states "has a cooldown." with no other indication of what that cooldown is, or how the cooldown speed upgrades affect it. By far the worst gripe with the game, incrementing numbers are meaningless in a game where the numbers are hidden in favour of visual representations. "+0.1 fuel gained per tile destroyed" how much fuel do I gain now per tile destroyed? How is this relative to my current ability? What does "+5 accuracy" mean? Getting the gun upgrades never specifies an accuracy to begin with, and there is no way to check what it may be. Again, is this 5%? 5 pixels? How can I estimate the value of this upgrade without any point of reference? Many examples of this are littered throughout the game. Idle games such as Cookie Clicker have clear input and output systems - you purchase an upgrade for x cookies, it increases your cookie output by y. Here, you are taking wild stabs at what your purchases do, and it takes away from the feeling of player agency. Sure, I can make decisions, but they feel random, unrewarding, and pointless on an individual level.
- Aside from an explosion on the broken tile, there is no indication of when resources are collected (aside from the meter with no numbers incrementing).
- At various points throughout a run, you will see parts of the train track spawn into existence. Can only assume this is a bug, if it's intentional it looks very bad.

Somewhat minor but still disappointing or frustrating:
- Game has a forced vignette that may look good with CRT but looks pretty bad without, and is almost an eye strain. Vignette and bloom effects were reduced significantly in a recent patch!
- Having auto accelerate locked behind an upgrade sucks, even if it is quickly obtained and seems to be to force early engagement - it still goes against the premise of idle games like this.
- The manage train UI is very awkward. It should be some sort of scrolling menu with the different train cart options, instead it exists as one box where you have to cycle through every cart on your train. I can imagine this feeling infuriating later on when you have 20+ carts and want to edit something in the middle.
- The maps (or what I've seen so far) are very plain. A huge appeal of train or travel based games is the exploration of terrain at high speeds. It would've been really cool to occasionally see houses in the distance, or animals running around or interacting with one another, flower patches, unique terrain etc. Currently for the forest map, it is literally just trees and stone endlessly.

There is a lot to work with here. Improving the UI across the board, adding a visible stats menu, and improving the terminology and labeling used to be consistent and transparent with the player will go a long way to creating a rewarding experience when progressing through upgrades both in a tactile form (interacting with the buttons/systems) and in an idle-game dopamine seeking form (understanding what your decisions do and feeling good about the purchases made).

Some of these reviews are way too harsh, lol.

You're a train, you blow stuff up, numbers go up. Start as a tiny little guy struggling to shoot down one tree and end as a murder machine obliterating the entire asteroid belt.

Seriously, don't overthink it.

I really hate to give this game a Negative Review, but there's a few issues that really draw my attention.

To start, For the first 1-2 hours, this game is fun. It has a good game-play loop, and it is very fun to just vibe out and destroy stuff.

HOWEVER, as soon as you get further in, it gets difficult to give a positive rating. For the following reasons:

1. The game-play loop, though great in the beginning, gets tedious. It feels extremely boring to have to destroy the same things over and over to get upgrades. You hit a point very quickly where it feels the best option is to just run the levels you've already played and grind resources.

2. The progression, is slow and tedious. The Devs current solution to this was a crafting system that you unlock, that allows you to craft resources together to create more advanced modules. I was very excited while playing when I saw this, because I thought "Hmm, maybe there's some advanced resource I can create to really upgrade my stuff!" There is not. The crafting system is solely integrated to lengthen the amount of time you spend grinding for those advanced modules.

3. The game-play never changes or morphs. While I love LOVE the concept that they were going for, this game does not satisfy the itch of the audience they were trying to market to. It ends up being a boring slog fest through upgrades that feel like they do nothing.

To the Devs: I am a fellow Dev myself. I love the game concept and how you did it in the demo, but I feel the game drags on far too long for what it is. You have a fun idea, and while this game starts fun, by the end it is a boring slog. I don't want you to take that in a bad way. You have a lot of potential here, just a bad execution on the end game.

To the Players: This game is fairly fun, and for the price it is somewhat fair. HOWEVER, I wouldn't buy this game unless it was ~2.99 MAXIMUM. It is a solid game that will entertain you, especially for fans of idle/incremental games. However it misses the mark in late game.

TLDR/To Summarize: Do not buy this game unless you ONLY intend to give it 1-2 hours of your time. Any more and it is not worth it. I respect the devs and the concept is fantastic, but it is just not worth the price at this time.

I will edit the review if a dev responds or if any further updates are published that fix this blatant issue in the late game.