Roidgrinder

I'm running an open playtest this week, give it a try! It will be available until Friday.The playtest can be accessed from the store page, looks like this:It's a late alpha build: a bit rough and lacking features but should give a pretty good idea of how a run feels like.Please give me feedback if you give it a try! I've included a link to Google Forms from the main menu.See if you can beat my score! :)J

I've been working on the late-game. I already had a nicely flowing upgrade path for the first 2/3 of the run but the last year needed more content. The main idea is that towards the end it should be possible (and worthwhile!) to do longer and longer grinding trips.The main changes were:1) Revised the asteroid belt generation mechanic. I made it so that the asteroids fields get richer (more likely to find the more valuable resource types) and bigger when you fly further from the main station. This provides the motivation for exploring further out.2) Added tools/upgrades like the spectroscope which tells the mineral content of nearby asteroids from afar and the hotrod which overcharges the thruster for short bursts to pick up speed quickly.3) Considerably increased fuel amounts.It still needs balancing adjustments but I was now able to complete one full run and it remained fun to play until the end. I'll be continuing the tuning & fixing and creating more upgrades to eventually move the project from alpha to beta phase.J

Balancing out mid/late game gameplay elements.I needed to come up with a way to make side hustling activities less dominating. The resource trading especially was problematic, since with the prices moving around a lot it was pretty easy to make lots of credits in a short time. Without any constraints, the best strategy would be to completely skip upgrading the ship and just sit at the station and trade, and then buy everything at once after snowballing enough funds.After some experimentation, I ended up with two changes:added a monthly quota for buy-orders based on game progress (due to "processing constraints" obviously)added another progress meter (besides credits earned) called Grinder's License level which increases only from the minerals returned after mining and tied some of the progression, like the buy order quota, into thatNow, resource trading remains a great way to earn funds but you will have to balance it out with other gameplay elements.Some of the other recent additions include:"nuke" program for quickly demolishing roid fields"feed" program for reading about events like resource price movementsportable trading program to make it possible to quickly benefit from said movements, even from whatever desolate locale we happen to be grinding roids inI'm now pretty close to the point of being able to complete one full run. The run length will be tied to the in-game calendar so that a single run spans about three years, and then the wealth earned will be the final score for the run.J