comments for Idle Lab Rats
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Hi all,
Thank you to everyone for giving this game a try. There’s definitely more work to be done, including bugged abilities, UI/UX, better descriptions and some balancing. I’m hoping to have the next release done in a few months with a good amount of new features. I was originally planning on wiping progress with the next release, but after seeing the enthusiasm players have shown, I’ll probably have to reconsider this.
Thanks again for the feedback,
-Alex
I feel like the scry ball ability might not work as intended? I've repeatedly had a rat go down dead-end paths that were scouted by the scry ball, or completely ignore the arrows pointing towards the cheese when the scry ball found it. Right now I'm rating it at the bottom of all abilities I've encountered.
The chemistry upgrades get prohibitively expensive quite quickly, meanwhile there's no major rise in research gain so it just comes down to throwing time and rats at the cost.
Training equipment seems of very limited use right now, especially seeing as the rats' proficiency does not factor into it at all so higher levels are impossible to gain with training equipment. It gives some easy early levels, but that's about it. If you sell the training equipment you can have a 4th rat instead.
This game has tons of potential. It's already fun in its current state, but has a lot of places it could (should) grow in. In its current state, not only do I not see much reason to purchase more than one of each rat training facility, but you just don't have the space in your garage to do so. A good alternative maybe would be to allow us to upgrade those things so they level up a rats stats faster. Another good example of this is the chemistry set or the carpenter bench. Why would you ever want two chemistry sets when all it does is unlock research and takes up 4 squares of space?
Secondly, some of the level-up perks your later rats can unlock are just super useless at best, and detrimental at worst. For instance - spin top is basically completely useless. It doesn't appear to make your rat go much faster and just seems to be goofy, but it doesn't really appear to make them any slower either. In stark juxtaposition, drift king is extremely useful. Scrying orb is VERY detrimental in its current state. Maybe it's bugged? It seems like when it reveals a bad path that dead-ends, my rat will follow it anyway, and even when it scries the correct path to the cheese, my rat will also completely ignore that and wander around as usual. The worst part about it though is a combination of 2 things - firstly, it pauses your rat every time it scries, which slows things down quite a bit, and as Trondor mentioned in another comment, if you have a rat with 2 INT perks and they are scrying orb/blink, your rat will just freeze when it blinks and scries simultaneously. Other perks in the game all seem to be in a good state, even though some are definitely stronger than others.
This is definitely a fun experience right now though, so don't give up on the project. I could very much see this being a game that ends up being an indie release on steam or something with some more depth and love given to it.
the window size only worked once i went on the original site
@galaxyuser63274 literally what are you yapping about...
1. Select the rat.
2. Settings.
3. Buy a cage.
4. There is a free rat in the shop.
You need above the price to purchase the upgrades. ex: Cost 18 Needs 19.
As though scrying orb wasn't bad enough, it also causes your rat to freeze if activated at the same time as Blink.
I do not see anyone mention this.
Ram ability becomes disability in a way that the rats break too many walls and they wonder in circles which slows down the process.
Especially when you have low intelligence.
I hope there'll be another update soon.
Maybe something like higher tier rats not starting from 1 on stats. Or free rats' max stats being raised so you can always complete a grant. Or a repeatable grant that gives lower than average money but can always be completed with a free rat.
Or maybe rebalance stat growth just a little. Stamina usually falls behind agility and intelligence in growth (when the upgrades are equal).
developer response: Update is in progress. The plan for getting stuck with difficult grants is to increase the sell value of a rat based on stats gained rather than just half of buy cost. This is effectively a cheap repeatable grant except it doesn't award grant level progress.
Also the math for stats is going to change pretty drastically. In the live version, stats have an exponent on the actions that award xp, which makes a rat that does a bad job at solving a maze and wastes time rack up increasing amounts of xp. This is being replaced with a multiplier based on maze size and flat gain during the maze solve. This awards fast and slow maze solves the same amount per time.
Personally I do feel like the "bad path marking depth" should reason from the closest end-tile rather than furthest, in the case of converging paths.
developer response: I think this could easily lead to massive dead end chains, at least up to the max dead ends limit.
i want to move. grant level 11 and still locked with that little room, blocked by the truck.
want moar cages,, mazes, training-utils, even moar rats running around...
Does the carpenter bench work yet? I bought it but I'm not seeing the button to change maze types.
It looks like the chemistry thing DOES work, though it was a bit vague how to get repurposed research. Looks like I got my excess research points after submitting a rat to a grant.
And as other people have mentioned, the resolution of the game is a bit wonky. I need to hit either the "expand" or the "open original" buttons at the bottom to see everything properly.
alright.... late-game (grant lvl 14 now) ....
rats with 3 perks...
shut up and take my money!
i have enough (~2400)
getting so picky now with that rats 😅
developer response: Wow... Well I should warn you you're playing out of the bounds I've tested. Also beware that GL 19 is the max and I didn't expect anyone to play that far so you might hit some errors if you go any further ...
I personally think the scry should force the rat to follow the path if it finds the cheese, and maybe even mark single dead ends.
developer response: yeah, it's a bug that will be fixed in the next update
its good because it isnt a game that forces me to just wait until i can buy an upgrade
I'm loving the game quite a lot, but I can't figure out how to use the carpentry bench, can I have some help?
developer response: It needs to be adjacent to mazes to affect them. It was quite an oversight on my part to not include it in the description.
me like the concept very unique
i rat this game a good ratting
i haven't even gone through this game that much and i already like it
is it just me or is the window size a bit small cuz i couldnt see the other menus or all of the text
oh my god the beginner rats aare so stupid
they're 1 tile from the goal and they turn the wrong way
Finally figured it out. The carpenter bench in the lab needs to be adjacent to the maze(s) in question for you to be able to switch to different maze styles. My bench is now adjacent to 2 of my 3 mazes, and I can finally switch to other maze types for those two.
This... should probably be made clearer or the adjacency requirement should be removed entirely.