Lich Incremental (Demo)
Short incremental (not an idler) about managing minions and (in future) an empire.
HOW TO PLAY: Click on actions to start/stop. Game auto-pauses if you have nothing to do at the assigned station. Some actions are split between harvest/haul. Minions are click-n-drag to nearly anything you can do, and decay depending on task (harvest mostly arms, hauling mostly legs). Recycle useless minions on the minion page. Crafting has two input fields, the first is stockpile quota, the second is a manual override. Some actions can be repeated, toggle them in the corner between "1" and "Repeat". Clear notification flashing by starting the new action or viewing its tooltip.
NOTE: Please go full-screen before hitting Play, if that's your preference. The Info button has many notes, descriptions of mechanics, and the unimplemented story. Clear flashing unlock notifications by starting the activity or viewing its tooltip.
TIPS: Tools and skills help a lot! Choose hosts wisely depending on what you're trying to do. Lumberjack is fantastic early on. Sometimes a shorter life is better to get more minions.
Prototype: Many more hours of content already planned out, but I won't be developing it unless this catches enough interest. I've also temporarily disabled saving because it's so short.
Comments
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Pretty neat! Needs some way to see how many resources a craft consumes though. Reinforcing skeletons doesn't seem worth the cost, maybe that changes at some point though, I haven't finished the tower's first layer yet. That might be related to what appears to be *passive* damage over time. I only found that when I tried stockpiling skeletons while I manually crafted items to get an eye for the costs.
On that note, UI there is a bit odd to learn.
Left textbox seems to be a passive "Craft to this many" whereas right is a "I want an additional this many queued." for active demands. Resources further down the tree are prioritized over higher ones, and those embedded deeper using - are crafted using the ones higher above. I'm not sure how the "keep stocked" one works with the high yield recipes, whether it says "I have more than X resources" or "X crafts of resources." Unfortunately, I am currently saving resources for the tower so I'm not testing that yet.
Tools seem to offer a 2x base boost, then further boosted by the "tools" skill?
It seems skeletons have a base efficiency of 0.5x, which gets offset by the command skill?
What seems to be the recipes, for anyone else
Carpentry:
1 Tree -> 2 Beams
1 Beam-> 4 planks
2 Planks -> 4 Rods
8 Rods -> 1 Wheel
Masonry:
1 Raw Earth -> Some combination of ore, stone, and clay. Inconsistent?
4 stone -> 4 brick?
2 Clay -> 1 Pottery (don't know what these are used for yet, though!)
Forge:
1 Ore -> 1 Iron. Real shocker.
4 Iron, 1 Rod -> 300 Axes
2 Iron, 1 Rod -> 300 Hammers
10 Planks, 4 Rods, 2 Wheels, 2 Iron -> 600? carts (went past 1k, might be imprecise).
Impressive!
Reinforcing skeletons is worth it for specific high-drain tasks like mining. Otherwise they are meant to be disposable. Yes, passive decay is a thing, something like 5% per life on average. More modifications (such as task specialization) were planned.
You got crafting UI exactly right. Lots of people struggled with that which isn't surprising since it's pretty unusual. Left number is "sustain" or target passive stockpile, right number is "extra" or manual override. I wanted to get recipes in there but it's really compact. Figured I could just add it to the Info docs later if it's a problem. Tooltips say what the components are, at least. Yes, processing Raw Earth has some variation AND rates improve as you upgrade the mine (tooltip again) which is also the only way to replenish mine saturation. Pottery does nothing yet.
I was also worried about the split harvest/haul UI being a sticking point, but people seemed to figure that one out pretty quick. Nobody has commented on saturation yet at all (the circle on resources, limits over-harvest and usually recovers over time). A proper tutorial going over all those little things and drag-n-drop is definitely needed. It's possible to unassign minions by clicking on them but I don't think anybody knows that...
Yep, tools normally x2 (*skill) and carts double items per haul. Stacks with Harvesting/etc skills. Command is for skeletons and 50% base, yes. Skill xp is 1/s while active, stacking (half for minions). Skill effect is root(xp).
Tool quantity is seconds of use-time. Tool meter 100% represents 1 hour of real-time availability. Tower 1 opens up several new things, namely feedback loop upgrades (tool effect, cart effect, tools gained per craft, minion decay) and intro to magic (minor stackable automations). Tower 2 (not yet implemented) unlocks permanent skills which is where magic slowly becomes approachable.
Rather surprised that someone took such interest in this little project. Thanks for the input. Would you mind sharing your thoughts on progression / resource loops / etc as an incremental game? I like how objectives change every life depending on resources and host, things like that.