Fracture Field

Took me ages to realise that bombs are the way to go for mining the 4th tier of rock. Personally would've liked it if I could drop bombs with RMB as well, then I wouldn't even need to touch my keyboard while clearing my quarry.

@shadowol bomb refresh shouldn't restart? What are you talking about? Each bomb is on its own cooldown timer, the game only shows you the remaining time of the bomb closest to refreshing. So if you regain a bomb it shows you the remaining time for the next bomb.

The two main things to fix:
1. If I have 10 bombs and shoot one per second and they have a ten second refresh, I want to be dropping bombs constantly. The refresh shouldn't restart.
2. The drones should target round robin. That means each drone should be look for the next rock with no allocated drone. When a rock is eliminated, check if any drone is linked to that round and return it to the pool of available drones. If there are more rocks than drones, drones should go to the top of the list and join the other drones. This should bring drone idleness to close to zero. Then its a matter of targetting

The imbalance between drones, the manual poke, and the bomb is pretty substantial. I decided to grind this a fair bit, and my bombs are able to one-shot quartz from the base rock spawn, and having 10 of them with maxed cooldown (and each bomb having its own SEPARATE cooldown) means you drop a bomb that blows up 2-4 quartz once per second... Or I can let my 22 lost drones wander around until they start hitting a quartz for the next 50 seconds before breaking it. Even if I start poking a rock, my attack speed is just so much faster that without bombs I'm still like 10x faster than the drones, even when there are multiple on the same rock.
Do the drone movement and attack speed upgrades actually do anything? I took both up to a million dirt cost nearly, and it just seems so weak still.

I actually quite like the game so far, but the balance seems a little bit off.

I bounced off this one, mostly because of how slow the start is. Quit shortly after breaking my fourth clay rock.
Main frustrations:
Initially each rock gives you 5 resources and takes 7.5s to fracture, only after it's gone do you get to wait 1-2s for the next rock to appear. You need 100 resources to be allowed to have a 2nd rock on the field. I clearly went for drones too early because they were practically useless until I was close to unlocking the next layer.
Drone targeting is random, it's quite annoying to watch them amble their way across the screen past several other rocks. Drones need an option for targeting (closest, least health, most health, highest value...).
Oh yeah, clay. Much longer to fracture (sure), much longer to wait for respawn (why God why?).
After unlocking clay you get infinite bombs - nice. They're on a long refresh time and initially don't even take half the health of clay - not nice.
The upgrades are as would be expected, (damage, crit, attack speed) but only 10% at a time? And 0.5% for crit chance?
The rock stats show the "yield" but not for the first resource (sand?). Kind of irritating that you have to have the quarry menu open to see rock stats, it would work better as a tooltip.
Smaller frustrations:
The light source for the interactive rocks doesn't match the rest of the game, their shading implies the light is on the left, not the right. (I presume the art is where gen-ai is involved?)
Similarly it's a bit jarring having a mix of pixel art resolutions. Almost feels like watching the moment in Dragon Ball when a part of a cliff is about to be destroyed.
Having the mouse change to a pointer when there isn't anything to click on. (e.g. Between the panels)
Major concern:
You're collecting analytics without even informing the player. That's almost certainly a big no-no. Especially if you're collecting any identifiable information (IP address, device info...). I only knew the game was trying because I like to open developer mode and I saw a bunch of failed requests thanks to my adblocker. I haven't checked the legality personally, (I'm not a lawyer) but I'm pretty sure some regions (e.g. the EU) require the game to inform the user about analytics and provide the ability to opt-out.
How I would progress:
I can see the vision. It's a bit hazy, but I can see an outline.
0. Look in the Unity docs for any information about analytics privacy and consent. Act on it if necessary.
1. Sitting around waiting to be allowed to do something is the worst. All rocks should respawn instantly.
2. Drones: Targeting as mentioned earlier, display their battery and let me click on them to recharge. Start them off with their own base damage and have +% click damage as a future upgrade.
3. Bombs: Rather than a third separate "upgrade damage 10% at a time" mechanic, how about they instead deal % of max health? (e.g. 20% base, hardcap at 50%) Keeps them easily relevant forever and could be really satisfying to hit multiple high level rocks at once.
4. Upgrades: Too many % based upgrades in the early game. That first 'resource purity' upgrade doesn't even pay for itself until you've fractured 16 rocks. Even worse for future upgrades because the increase is additive instead of multiplicative. I'd scale the game to be more click focussed in the first couple of stages, then transition to more of a drone-micromanagement game. e.g. The starting click upgrades are much better (2/3/4x click power, 2/3/4x click speed...) and you unlock drones in the clay stage (or maybe bombs in clay, drones in the stage after that).
5. Resources: Starting off with 2 independent resources is a little confusing, especially when the stats don't tell you that the rocks also drop sand. I'd look at adding a 'stage 0' where you click on a large pile of sand or something. Then use sand to unlock the base rock.
Final remark
I know this comes across as really critical - because it is - but I promise it's not malicious. Making a game isn't easy, even with dedicated tools, (Unity etc.) and this is just an MVP after all. <3

Love this! Can't wait for more content:>

I bounced off this one, mostly because of how slow the start is. Quit shortly after breaking my fourth clay rock.
Main frustrations:
Initially each rock gives you 5 resources and takes 7.5s to fracture, only after it's gone do you get to wait 1-2s for the next rock to appear. You need 100 resources to be allowed to have a 2nd rock on the field. I clearly went for drones too early because they were practically useless until I was close to unlocking the next layer.
Drone targeting is random, it's quite annoying to watch them amble their way across the screen past several other rocks. Drones need an option for targeting (closest, least health, most health, highest value...).
Oh yeah, clay. Much longer to fracture (sure), much longer to wait for respawn (why God why?).
After unlocking clay you get infinite bombs - nice. They're on a long refresh time and initially don't even take half the health of clay - not nice.
The upgrades are as would be expected, (damage, crit, attack speed) but only 10% at a time? And 0.5% for crit chance?
The rock stats show the "yield" but not for the first resource (sand?). Kind of irritating that you have to have the quarry menu open to see rock stats, it would work better as a tooltip.
Smaller frustrations:
The light source for the interactive rocks doesn't match the rest of the game, their shading implies the light is on the left, not the right. (I presume the art is where gen-ai is involved?)
Similarly it's a bit jarring having a mix of pixel art resolutions. Almost feels like watching the moment in Dragon Ball when a part of a cliff is about to be destroyed.
Having the mouse change to a pointer when there isn't anything to click on. (e.g. Between the panels)
Major concern:
You're collecting analytics without even informing the player. That's almost certainly a big no-no. Especially if you're collecting any identifiable information (IP address, device info...). I only knew the game was trying because I like to open developer mode and I saw a bunch of failed requests thanks to my adblocker. I haven't checked the legality personally, (I'm not a lawyer) but I'm pretty sure some regions (e.g. the EU) require the game to inform the user about analytics and provide the ability to opt-out.
How I would progress:
I can see the vision. It's a bit hazy, but I can see an outline.
0. Look in the Unity docs for any information about analytics privacy and consent. Act on it if necessary.
1. Sitting around waiting to be allowed to do something is the worst. All rocks should respawn instantly.
2. Drones: Targeting as mentioned earlier, display their battery and let me click on them to recharge. Start them off with their own base damage and have +% click damage as a future upgrade.
3. Bombs: Rather than a third separate "upgrade damage 10% at a time" mechanic, how about they instead deal % of max health? (e.g. 20% base, hardcap at 50%) Keeps them easily relevant forever and could be really satisfying to hit multiple high level rocks at once.
4. Upgrades: Too many % based upgrades in the early game. That first 'resource purity' upgrade doesn't even pay for itself until you've fractured 16 rocks. Even worse for future upgrades because the increase is additive instead of multiplicative. I'd scale the game to be more click focussed in the first couple of stages, then transition to more of a drone-micromanagement game. e.g. The starting click upgrades are much better (2/3/4x click power, 2/3/4x click speed...) and you unlock drones in the clay stage (or maybe bombs in clay, drones in the stage after that).
5. Resources: Starting off with 2 independent resources is a little confusing, especially when the stats don't tell you that the rocks also drop sand. I'd look at adding a 'stage 0' where you click on a large pile of sand or something. Then use sand to unlock the base rock.
Final remark
I know this comes across as really critical - because it is - but I promise it's not malicious. Making a game isn't easy, even with dedicated tools, (Unity etc.) and this is just an MVP after all. <3

I wish drones had the option to target random ores instead of only one type

So I like the idea of drones "running out of battery" as I see it when they go grey every 30 seconds. It seems they stay down for about 10 seconds before powering back up. I'd keep this mechanic, but I would like to see two upgrades available for drones -- battery life and repair speed in order to increase battery life and decrease time needed for repairs. A little "health bar" on each drone could be a neat little touch also.

I'd suggest putting a limit on the capacity upgrades or removing the one on total rocks, just doesn't make sense that they can be purchased beyond where they function.

3h 15m - reached pretty much endgame, bombs instamine quartz, clicks instamine sandstone

games pretty fun for how simple it is, but would love to see more ways to actually improve damage for later resources like sandstone and quartz earlier on since the ability to mine them easily takes a little longer than id hope for

4/5