comments for Project Basilisk
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wow! I really liked this game. Super fun. I wrote a reallyl long guide (by my low effort standards) because I really enjoyed it so much. This game has lots of soul. About you using generative ai, I think this is a great example of good usage. I liked the emails, liked what was going on, liked the systems. Whetehre you specifically had every idea first or whatever, you curated and fundamentally/finally created an awesome game. Incremental games as a genre despeaately need more games like this that actually have gameplay, ie, loss, risk, challenge that isnt "can i stand to wait/babysit this".
If youre having trouble, I had a fail and was having a lot of trouble figuring things out. I just beat the game, and I beat it taking the verification which afaik is just slower.
Basically, you need to constantly be trying to get applications, max your customers. So, there is market demand, there is your max demand, and then there is what youve actually acquired of your max. Afaik, I think, at least I treated it as such, that the market cap is essentially a hard cieling. Generally, push your cap up, and then meet that cap. Now here is the final piece you really need to make sure you get right. In your compute tab, where you choose internal vs external. Push external up, specifically, there is something like a provided compute / desired compute. ITs about your demand. You satisfy this desired compute to make money/please your customers.
Doing this, you will have shit tons of money. Make sure you are consistently buying the later guys, but only when you can afford them (obvious but easy to mess up tbh). They are orders of magnitude larger. 50k vs 5k for example. Notice that I said consistently not constantly. This game is forgiving. Just nudge things up.
Crucially, i had actually zero issues with the data integrity. Just make sure you dont poison it with the earlier low quality auto data. One thing I really, really prioritized with the boatloads of cash I had, which you should have too, was I bought tons of data. By the time data integrity wasnt a cocnern anymore, my research was multiplied by like .42. Like, my model's data was thousands and thousands behind where it should have beenm. Hoenstly, perhaps I was too worried about the quality, idk. It worked out.
So, imo, more or less always prioritize applications. Then prioritize customers and satisfying them.
Oh, also, I never took the e or f series because ada implied they were bad I thought. This has no effect on anything afaik. People referenced them as if I had done them.
To give you an idea of market edge, I think the least edge I had was .4 years ahead. By the end I was like 1.4 years ahead. This makes your demand sky-high.
To summarize, money is compute and staff, which is research, which is money. As long as you make sure the money is coming in, you're good. Always keep a buffer, be careful, but don't jsut keep money in reserve. Put the money where it needs to go, use it to grow. Money in your account doesnt make you money (except when it saves you from fucking up/lets you make big purchases).
Oh yeah, one last thing about market demand. AFaik, market demand explodes when you make certain researches or cross certain tiers. Idk, keep an eye on it. Whenever it shoots up, chase that. You need your slice of the market to win.
If youre having trouble, I had a fail and was having a lot of trouble figuring things out. I just beat the game, and I beat it taking the verification which afaik is just slower.
Basically, you need to constantly be trying to get applications, max your customers. So, there is market demand, there is your max demand, and then there is what youve actually acquired of your max. Afaik, I think, at least I treated it as such, that the market cap is essentially a hard cieling. Generally, push your cap up, and then meet that cap. Now here is the final piece you really need to make sure you get right. In your compute tab, where you choose internal vs external. Push external up, specifically, there is something like a provided compute / desired compute. ITs about your demand. You satisfy this desired compute to make money/please your customers.
Doing this, you will have shit tons of money. Make sure you are consistently buying the later guys, but only when you can afford them (obvious but easy to mess up tbh). They are orders of magnitude larger. 50k vs 5k for example. Notice that I said consistently not constantly. This game is forgiving. Just nudge things up.
Crucially, i had actually zero issues with the data integrity. Just make sure you dont poison it with the earlier low quality auto data. One thing I really, really prioritized with the boatloads of cash I had, which you should have too, was I bought tons of data. By the time data integrity wasnt a cocnern anymore, my research was multiplied by like .42. Like, my model's data was thousands and thousands behind where it should have beenm. Hoenstly, perhaps I was too worried about the quality, idk. It worked out.
So, imo, more or less always prioritize applications. Then prioritize customers and satisfying them.
Oh, also, I never took the e or f series because ada implied they were bad I thought. This has no effect on anything afaik. People referenced them as if I had done them.
To give you an idea of market edge, I think the least edge I had was .4 years ahead. By the end I was like 1.4 years ahead. This makes your demand sky-high.
To summarize, money is compute and staff, which is research, which is money. As long as you make sure the money is coming in, you're good. Always keep a buffer, be careful, but don't jsut keep money in reserve. Put the money where it needs to go, use it to grow. Money in your account doesnt make you money (except when it saves you from fucking up/lets you make big purchases).
Oh yeah, one last thing about market demand. AFaik, market demand explodes when you make certain researches or cross certain tiers. Idk, keep an eye on it. Whenever it shoots up, chase that. You need your slice of the market to win.
Further to my previous comment, I'm giving up after run 4. You really need to rethink how the playuer is expected to engage with this game.
Expanding your company after Round A is an active trap that ruins you down the line, and you never reach profitability while your rivals continue to flourish. I'm sure there's a golden line I can follow to actually succeed at this game, but I'm too frustrated to care about trying to find it across half-dozen 40 minute attempts.
Expanding your company after Round A is an active trap that ruins you down the line, and you never reach profitability while your rivals continue to flourish. I'm sure there's a golden line I can follow to actually succeed at this game, but I'm too frustrated to care about trying to find it across half-dozen 40 minute attempts.
This game single-handedly rekindled my love for free browser games. Too bad it's got such a low rating compared to its contemporaries
The current design of the opening of the game seems... Oddly cruel. Given that you're unlocking new personnel options, incentivised to expand by the NPC dialogue and that tempting little 'market edge' button, but actually investing in your research early just leads to complete financial ruin when the investments wear off. I've had to restart three times, and it's not a particularly fun game loop, because all I can do is hire less staff and buy less equipment each time.
"Active prestige bonuses now visible in Settings > Stats (guided mode only)
Removed prestige bonuses appearing on the ending screen in narrative mode"
I think this was a bad move, it no longer shows that there is any progression on a reset. The way it is meant to be played has 0 context that this is happening, the rewards are a little sub-par too. Or are they stacking per? The clarity to the user isn't really there.
I say this finishing the game. Yes it is hard. There is a little RNG it feels. There is no scale as to your rival and how far ahead they are is always dominant until the last year when your exponential scale is insane. You don't feel that satisfaction until the end though. That start and mid is just struggle all the time, even after you break even you are on a time clock you can't quantify. You just feel like you randomly lost. By the time I had reset so many times I finished only needing to unlock up to D. The narrative talked about F. I didn't ever get that far because the timeline pushed me to be better than the investors. I never sold more than 2% of my company for the sole purpose of unlocking more things because I needed them and I needed the investors to unlock it, I didn't need the money. Well except for D for Data. That was more greed in wanting it quicker.
Idk how guided mode plays, there is no way without a hard reset to switch to it. Most people playing probably forgot that it gave them the option to choose hard. 565 players and 496h played. The few dedicated people to finishing it like me spending many hours on it show a sad statistic which says its too hard and the clarity to the player isn't there for maintaining interest. The narrative I like, I'm glad I made it to the end. Also there is no idle about this. its is a very active game requiring active attention or you can easily research something new and lose in less than a second. Notably when the ammount of tokens you are making plummets instantly.
IMO there should be some narrative and incentive to get slightly further than before and having a satisfaction that going bankrupt or the competitors beating you out(which is harder than keeping your company afloat, which is hard enough.) gives hope to keep going. Right now it just looks like I restarted the game from scratch and I have to do everything just right. Also, reoccuring Data is too expensive. It really kills the mid game balancing the synth with the precariousness of $/Research when $=Data and Data=Research But you can't choose both so you end up with .5x Data and .5x Research just to keep enough Data around and your company from going under.
Cloud compute is so very important early game but players don't see that because of trying for the long game. Initially that sense of beating out the competitors isn't there. It is also expensive per TF so its better to buy the cheaper ones because I'm focused on sustainability. However Cloud compute is the only way early to balance the TF you need to make money and research. Most of my runs never used them till the cost per TF caught up. Then I bought 1 early and it changed the game, but it wasn't sustainable the second the investors funds ran out. I guess the point I think I am making is the balance is finite and doesn't allow for different styles of play. You either do it the right way or you see that your competitors are getting ahead, and after they are there, you restart ASAP because you are not catching up at that point. Maybe add some RPG into it to make the player feel more in control of who this character they are playing is so that they can work with the different pros and cons.
Also the decision for Early Deployment or Waiting. I haven't won once with Waiting. Only Early Development. That negative to market edge is nothing compared to the increase in demand and growth. not having it makes the game so much more impossible.
I was happy to learn that there are 5 endings. I haven't gotten all of them but the desire to go through and find how to get them is...tedious in my head because finishing at all is a challenge. 113y Playtime
Removed prestige bonuses appearing on the ending screen in narrative mode"
I think this was a bad move, it no longer shows that there is any progression on a reset. The way it is meant to be played has 0 context that this is happening, the rewards are a little sub-par too. Or are they stacking per? The clarity to the user isn't really there.
I say this finishing the game. Yes it is hard. There is a little RNG it feels. There is no scale as to your rival and how far ahead they are is always dominant until the last year when your exponential scale is insane. You don't feel that satisfaction until the end though. That start and mid is just struggle all the time, even after you break even you are on a time clock you can't quantify. You just feel like you randomly lost. By the time I had reset so many times I finished only needing to unlock up to D. The narrative talked about F. I didn't ever get that far because the timeline pushed me to be better than the investors. I never sold more than 2% of my company for the sole purpose of unlocking more things because I needed them and I needed the investors to unlock it, I didn't need the money. Well except for D for Data. That was more greed in wanting it quicker.
Idk how guided mode plays, there is no way without a hard reset to switch to it. Most people playing probably forgot that it gave them the option to choose hard. 565 players and 496h played. The few dedicated people to finishing it like me spending many hours on it show a sad statistic which says its too hard and the clarity to the player isn't there for maintaining interest. The narrative I like, I'm glad I made it to the end. Also there is no idle about this. its is a very active game requiring active attention or you can easily research something new and lose in less than a second. Notably when the ammount of tokens you are making plummets instantly.
IMO there should be some narrative and incentive to get slightly further than before and having a satisfaction that going bankrupt or the competitors beating you out(which is harder than keeping your company afloat, which is hard enough.) gives hope to keep going. Right now it just looks like I restarted the game from scratch and I have to do everything just right. Also, reoccuring Data is too expensive. It really kills the mid game balancing the synth with the precariousness of $/Research when $=Data and Data=Research But you can't choose both so you end up with .5x Data and .5x Research just to keep enough Data around and your company from going under.
Cloud compute is so very important early game but players don't see that because of trying for the long game. Initially that sense of beating out the competitors isn't there. It is also expensive per TF so its better to buy the cheaper ones because I'm focused on sustainability. However Cloud compute is the only way early to balance the TF you need to make money and research. Most of my runs never used them till the cost per TF caught up. Then I bought 1 early and it changed the game, but it wasn't sustainable the second the investors funds ran out. I guess the point I think I am making is the balance is finite and doesn't allow for different styles of play. You either do it the right way or you see that your competitors are getting ahead, and after they are there, you restart ASAP because you are not catching up at that point. Maybe add some RPG into it to make the player feel more in control of who this character they are playing is so that they can work with the different pros and cons.
Also the decision for Early Deployment or Waiting. I haven't won once with Waiting. Only Early Development. That negative to market edge is nothing compared to the increase in demand and growth. not having it makes the game so much more impossible.
I was happy to learn that there are 5 endings. I haven't gotten all of them but the desire to go through and find how to get them is...tedious in my head because finishing at all is a challenge. 113y Playtime
The game is a small treasure trove of the information on how a company works, and it deserves a full praise for it. But as a game, it has very little replayability.
Not the best idea to make the start of your game so slow.
developer response: Thanks for the feedback - I've lowered early game requirements a bit to hopefully make that section smoother.
love the metacommentary
This game concept and the blance is awsome! Here is some though I have when I play the game: 1. We really need a detailed income/cost breakdown to understand why the cost suddenly increase. 2. The research complate tips box would block the pause button when you need it. 3. It would be great if we can see the prestige bounse status somewhere.
developer response: Thanks for playing! 1 - if you hover over the rows in the full financial ledger, it provides a breakdown of each one. 2 - I'll take a look at moving these toasts, or maybe a settings option to auto-pause on certain events like milestone completion. 3 - I've added this in the newest release 0.9.1.1 based on your feedback (under Settings > Stats). Thanks again!
I have to agree with the other comments here. This game is just too tightly balanced and reliant on knowing what's going to be the right way ahead when it's ostensibly a 'singularity' game about discovering gamechanging AI discoveries.
This game got me to really look into the current state of AI and try to understand it, the fact that the scaling laws are still in line today scares me until i see what people are building in the news and on twitter. Can't wait to see how the Alignment Problem is tackled in future updates, following closely.
Very cool game, this is something uniqe that i actually enjoyed playing! Took me like 5 attempts to beat the narrative mode before 1.0 so takes some experience to beat the game, but the game needs an auto pause when you enter bankruptcy, as that has killed one of my runs right at the end. Now with 1.0 game definitly got better, and arc 2 was really fun, but i think is not very balanced, i feel like its much easier than arc 1 as there are so many more researches that buff you. But other then that the story was top notch, i was actually immersed into it and enjoyed it a lot, the game itself is well designed and i didnt see any bugs while playing. Rated this 5 stars and cant wait for new updates or new games from this author.
What does the green text on the price of a GPU mean? Other than that I dig it, it's more simulation-y than my typical preference of idle game, but it's cool.
developer response: That's just the upfront cost for buying it. I'll make that more clear in the tutorial. Thanks for trying it out!
Contrary to the consensus i really liked the game, i failed my first run due to overhiring and being unable to lay them off quickly enough, but won the second and third(trying the more careful route), the game is to me quite beautiful, it's a great testament on how ai-driven development can can aid non software devs to create unique and experiences, to each their own. Regarding the balance i don't think that the game is too difficult, my third run was a breeze, but it's true that a simple mistake can end the game easily, maybe an option would be to allow restarts at the last funding round? That said, i pretty much ran my own calculations and agree that some of the advice(like hiring a COO early on) from the messages can be a trap, it's best to see the game as a role play and the advice in rather than out of universe.
developer response: Thank you! Around the messages - I'll take a look here, quite possibly in my balance runs I moved things around mechanically and forgot to update the messages to provide better advice. They're definitely intended to be in-universe though (and it was surprisingly hard to figure out how I could shoe-horn in good advice for some of them haha)
Quite fun. Predictable ending.
are you still looking for feedback?
Had a lot of fun completing this, looking forward to Arc 2!
I think I like the idea of this, but it's so esoteric and difficult to plan ahead. It feels more like a simulation game than an idler. While simulation games are good and fun and CAN work well with idle games, this game requires a lot more active balancing rather than idling mechanics where you CAN track your past mistakes and avoid them in future runs. Rather, this game actively punishes you for letting it idle by making your opponent catch up, having your investments run out of time, or having your stocks depreciate. This is not really the heart of an idle game, and I don't feel it should be on this website due to this.
However, I WILL say that the game, AS a game by itself, is pretty well planned out for the kind of game that it is, and the writing is quite tight as well (hopefully none of the writing was GEN-AI because then I will have to take back this comment), and I like the idea.
The problem for me is just that it isn't really an idle game in the way I feel belongs to the category.
However, I WILL say that the game, AS a game by itself, is pretty well planned out for the kind of game that it is, and the writing is quite tight as well (hopefully none of the writing was GEN-AI because then I will have to take back this comment), and I like the idea.
The problem for me is just that it isn't really an idle game in the way I feel belongs to the category.
developer response: Yeah this definitely isn't an idle/clicker sort of game. If I had to pin it down, it'd be some combination of interactive novel / incremental / strategy / simulation. I appreciate you giving it a shot though! (And yes, all the writing is mine - as hopefully came across in the flavor tooltips if you've discovered those - AI could never... well, at least not yet)
How do i unfurlough?
developer response: Queuing up a buyable which has some furloughed will automatically unfurlough those (at no monetary cost) before hiring/buying more. Will look into adding a tutorial card for this.
I also agree the gameplay loop is incredibly slow paced to start. I'd prefer a moderate start up period of progression before it just leaves me waiting to check in on it.
developer response: Appreciate your insights as a developer! If you have more to share re: the game loop spaghetti issues, I'd be happy to hear it. To be clear, AI did not create this game from scratch. I've written dozens of pages of design documents and backstory, which I used to iterate with the coding.
I also updated the start of the game to have some lower research requirements which should hopefully help with pacing. Thanks again for sharing your comments!