comments for Midnight Idle

Loved the game, but there's a frustrating element: You can't win by knowing the puzzle solutions if you don't have enough upgrades, and you can't win by brute force even if you have every upgrade. Often I would mentally rule out what turned out to be the correct solution, because the game showed me that it didn't work, or I would be confident in the solution but have no realistic way of knowing how long I should go back and grind my skills before it was also an effective solution.

At a certain point I had all the upgrades that increased character strength and saw that it was turning into this really granular puzzle where I'd have to map out the whole decision tree--which requires turning off QoL features, ugh--and try all the reasonable traversals, or just look up the solution. Those both feel pretty bad, and experimentation that has a few minutes of unavoidable wait time stapled to every new trial feels worse worse, so I unfortunately chose option three.

That's all to say, it's still incredibly clear how much love and care went into making this, and I still had a ton of fun with it before it became something that I, myself, couldn't enjoy anymore. Thanks for making this and sharing, best wishes.

the concept is GREAT but all the images being ai suuuuuucks it honestly takes me out of the atmosphere a bit

the rat killing grind never stops. its all or none.

Major bug in second act of the game. Fought the Goblin Team, lost, and the game entered a state where it wouldn't reset the cycle. Refresh, back into the fight, lost, back in the stuck state. Go into settings, used the reset the cycle button, and then lost ALL my progress. I hadn't saved anything, so I just lost everything from that bug. Reporting it here so that others don't end up in the same situation.

I just started, and this game seems so fun! My only issue is the AI art, but I can manage, especially since you added an option to remove story art if someone really dislikes it that much. I suggest possibly making your own art later on in development and implementing it in one step at a time, since most people as of current aren't so interested in AI, and honestly making your own art makes the game so much better in immersion standards since you know how you want your game to look and feel. Again, great game, looking forward to more!

Very well made :D

Unlocks for the classes should not be random. With three existing classes and the huge branches in the new quest tree, if a player tries something and it doesn't work, there's low chance he'll come back trying the same thing. For example, I've stumbled upon the werewolf to unlock the new class, but couldn't beat it, so I crossed off that path as yet another unwinnable fight among many others and moved on. Turns out, this specific battle was essential to make any further progress, but without reading spoilers I would never have guessed it and would not come back multiple times till RNG lets me beat the monster and unlock a new class.

Popup Blocker seems like it includes the story page associated with killing Legion for the first time and it probably shouldn't. I restarted from scratch a bit ago and just got to this point again and was genuinely unsure whether I'd gotten a DS until I saw the New Story Branch marking on the portal path. I was getting ready to report it as a bug until I saw the marking, so now I'm just reporting it as something it would be good for players to see the first time they get it, even if they have that QOL.

easy S tier.

I'm just disabling the story art so the continue button will stop jumping around since every image needs a moment to load.
Looking at the change log... game hasn't been updated in a while. Wonder if it's dropped.

I love the concept, and I'm enjoying the game so far. a lot to grind, and I've only found five of the classes so far. I would like to see the loop expanded with more rewards for exploration, although maybe I'm talking a little bit too soon since I haven't done so much yet.

On a more serious note, besides loving the game, i feel like there are some suggestions if i may.
1) Pop up blocker upgrade, it says that it skips story, but i wanted to verify, if it blocks everything, or just the parts you already saw? Probably better be the latter, since there are chances of discovering new things. Also, switching it off works at any time, even in the middle on the walkthrough, but can't turn it back on until another reset. Kinda weird.
2) Blood gargoyle - well, there is a reward for defeating it, sure, but... what is actual point in getting it more then once? I feel like it could be better if after the first time it would be an upgrade to different one, or a new reward alltogether. Well, not that there is much rewarding stuff at that point, but still.
3) and yeah, sometimes it feels weird, that, like i was saying on previous commen, i managed to defeat some of the timed monsters, someone closer to end i think, upgraded attack and armor piercing for the next run and couldn't defeat it in next run, despite trying a few times. How unlucky one could get really? But that's minor point, as i said, just my lack of luck with RNG.

Still, thanks for the good game. Really enjoy running it through the day in background. Maybe one day i will beat it, although there is always a chance that i won't, but still, hope it will continue being updated and will get more things added. And one day will make it really big. Totally deserves that for all the fun i have with it.

Very cool game, glad I pushed past the rough edges. Took me a while to make much progress in chapter 2, but once I started getting some of the later upgrades unlocked I went from losing on the 4th challenger at the end to beating the final (for now) boss in like a day. Still have no idea how to open the doors at the end of each path, and I'm pretty sure I didn't find every last upgrade/unlock/optional encounter.

A few notes after beating the game:

* Top of my feature wishlist is definitely some in-game system for keeping track of things you've already found. A full map and quest journal / inventory UI would be great. A quicksave/quickload feature would also be a nice QoL addition, AD can already autoplay to get you back to the same spot again but if I'm on the verge of finding a cool new thing the last thing I want is to be forced to idle for a few minutes instead of doing the interesting new thing.

* Later on, when all the basic upgrades are maxed, things go so fast that it's damn near impossible to get to the settings, check the spirit upgrade shops, or even to switch between blood and sanity or manually use skills. It would be a lot easier to navigate the game while autorunning through the early game if pause stayed active when switching tabs, and combat putting you back on the previously selected tab afterwards would make it less frustrating to try and use (or even look at) sanity skills.

* It can be frustrating to get stuck, there's little to direct you toward the key unlocks and there are a lot of class/alignment/route combos to try. A couple times I felt like I had to grind out every available upgrade and beat some previously unbeatable monster, only to discover a big upgrade I could have easily unlocked without all the grinding. Some in-game hints, an NPC that offers advice about key options you've missed several times, maybe something like color-coded hints under specific paths and choices if you've previously made it to the room a new unlock is in but haven't found it yet?

* Would be nice to have a little 'new!' badge for upgrade tabs so I don't have to check all of them for new stuff, and removing or changing the messages telling me I unlocked an upgrade if I already had it.

* Oh, and it would be nice to get a reminder of which paths I've already cleared before deciding to take the portal back - or at least to disable the portal option if I've done all 4 paths, since you can't progress past the 'pick a path' room if you go back.

* ok last one I swear - the spirit drain mechanic is frustrating and makes any minor gripes with the UI become more annoying. It sucks to feel penalized for using the fully upgraded gamespeed boosting skill I spent a while grinding SP to buy because it makes me waste a bit more spirit every time I have to click 'journey ahead'. You can still pause anyway. I would much prefer if spirit only drained after I chose an option, during its timer, with balance tweaks as needed. It basically just punishes players for slow reaction times, reading speeds, or for their browser or device being laggy or unresponsive. Why not just let me take however long I want to read my options? If the idea is to have another source of variance so players can feel good when they pull off an efficient run with minimal wasted spirit, it needs to be based on a more engaging skill testing mechanic than 'how fast can you pause?'

I know that probably sounded negative, but I wouldn't have so many longwinded ideas about minor UI issues and QoL features if I didn't love the game. It captured the charm of oldschool choose your own adventure books, while having the addictive gameplay loop idlers and incremental games are known for. Although I must say, this one pushes the meaning of 'idle' in its name more than most :P

Having recently found a use for recall stones and at least one of the new classes (werewolf), I think I can finally see the overall shape of the "second chapter". That said, I have to agree with other comments that while the first portion of the game was easy enough to mentally track, there are now too many combinations of traits and branches to conveniently keep track of even by note-taking. Yes, I'm seeing how things finally start narrowing down again, but due to having been trained by the earlier part of the game into following the "keep changing traits between runs" strategy and not being able to just dismiss something as a bad choice simply because at the moment it looks like one there ended up being a massive amount of information to filter before I finally just decided to stick to bat+good and echolocated an initial "map" sketch. While I do realize how much of a pain UI design is, I'd like to suggest an in-game "map" page - either flowchart or sketch - that gets filled in as areas get visited and item locations and specialized shortcuts get found.

Other than that, while the toggling of bought QoL skills isn't usually important once players are past where those skills matter and I can understand why it's a potential source of bugs to mess with them in-run (even though for a lot of them that's excessively restrictive, it's simple), needing to completely buy a progressive skill just to toggle it off again was at times an issue early on. And it would be nice if "things you start automatically doing passing the altar" included cleaning up rats and bats and filling up to your maximum blood and sanity. I'm willing to say it's fine to not auto-grab the magic dagger and (for goblins) bombs on the grounds that in future chapters the story may grow more complex and so there may actually be good reasons to not want the dagger or bombs (mimic form, or choosing to leave the stuff for somebody else) but by the point that a player can reach Jezebel there's no longer any good reason to make sure they can turn the crank.

Good game. bad thing Rngesus as always so full of love, that after i upgrade things, i end up losing more often. Weird, but that's my life.

the combat shouldn't kick you out of every tab, give it it's own tab. trying to read stuff while farming sp is painful.

The damage of the mobs in the death quarters is TOO high while your damage is so low..

Can I import my saves from another site?

Peak.

beated it in 47 mins 35 seconds les goo