The Alterhistorian's Conquest
developed by Scar gamedev | rated 4.6 stars, 165 ratings.
|
165 ratings
Posted May 21, 2023. Updated June 25, 2023. Played 3291 times for a total of 7452 hours.
description
Please play in fullscreen.
Create the elixir of immortality in a world where elements are fluid and concepts can be distilled.
The primary goal of the game is to effectively manage your machines and resources. Idling is recommended to get fast time, which speeds up lost production.
Left/Right click on output slots to extract and hold resources, and Left/Right click on input slots to put them in.
Arrow keys/dragging to pan around the grid.
Hold resources in your hand to use them for upgrades.
latest update
Hints June 25, 2023
Since many of you were complaining in the comments about not being able to get certain resources and feeling stumped about progress- All resources are now visible at all times, with the name obscured for non-unlocked resources.
You can view resources by clicking on the map icon.
view all updates
newest comments
wait this one's bugged too
(see the point tree for context)
holy sh*t spoiler city
Fun game. Doesn't take very long to finish, took roughly 12 hours for me personally. Machine cap wasn't a problem, for me at least (48/50 at finish).
Some things that might be helpful to know for anyone playing this game:
- You can right-click to instantly take something out of a container.
- Hints are a thing in the map icon but at least for me the "i" button for machines was enough to figure out what to do. It shows you what inputs are accepted.
- You can use InputMergers as temporary storage. Kind of clunky but gets the job done.
- Make sure to not mix any materials together unless you're immediately going to sell them, because this can become very painful to fix.
Some criticisms:
- While the machine cap wasn't an issue for me personally, it almost was. Increasing it by, like, 10 shouldn't be an issue.
- You should be able to connect pipes by just clicking on one end then on the other. Currently it does show the pipe connection thing, but it doesn't actually work, you have to drag.
- Later on in the game, it can become difficult to see if machines are actually doing anything. There should be more floating points if it's <0.1.
- Please add some storage machine, which just contains a lot of inputs with no outputs. This would also require the next point:
- Make it so you can take materials out of Input containers.
- [ending spoiler] There should be some sort of progression after the ending, even just adding an ability to sell elixir to speed up the game permanently would be fun
- Add an "output per second" label for Output containers, so you can see how much is getting produced.
- Make the minimap show the full map, with the current camera position being highlighted. It currently doesn't let you see much beyond the camera.
- [late game spoilers kind of] "Consume the elixir" under Upgrades shouldn't appear until you have acquired some elixir. It's kind of a spoiler to what's ahead.
- The "Fast Time" feature is very confusing. It's nowhere explained what it does. From what I've seen, I got 10x speed for a few minutes when there was a day between my plays, and that's the only time where it would activate. I would suggest instead making it so you can, for example, sell essence to speed up the time temporarily, as this would be useful because the ending does get a little grindy and you have to wait a lot.
- Don't show numbers using scientific notation, as "1.4e4" for example, show them as normal. I've never had a single number in this game go beyond the 10 thousands, the notation just confuses things here.
Overall though, it's a great game that I would definitely recommend playing. It's fun trying to figure out how to make things work, and it can be quite challenging. It's fun to look at the system you've built when you're done.
Despite the above criticisms I would still give the game a 5/5 star rating because it was just a lot of fun.
I find it interesting how when you reach the machine cap the game tells you "Reached machine cap in this town!", makes me want to think if there's some plan to add more features to this game, which I would absolutely adore. Though I feel like a bunch of changes would need to be made to make it possible for much larger systems. Still, amazing game with great additional potential.
... where do I go after elixir?
@Mateon1 you make essence by putting energy in both slots of the essence purifier. You make glass by putting sand through an arc furnace. I think stone dust is more efficient for going through transmuters, which come later.
top comments
Some parts of the game are a bit frustrating, you don't know if you're waiting for more resources so a new machine shows up in the shop, or if you need to find a combination, but you haven't clicked on all inputs of all machines with all resources yet (There should be some visual indication of valid machine inputs when you're holding something). I'm currently stuck after unlocking lava, no idea how to get essence or glass (presumably from sand, but how to get it?). Stone dust currently seems useless. I've tried as far as mixing a bunch of resources in an InputMerger, but that just makes a messy mix in the output, without any reactions creating something new.
One of the best resource management games I've ever played. Simple mechanics, but requires thinking and planning to be optimal.
If I had to nitpicki the starting prices are a bit high. Other than that, a very fun and short (for a incremental) game to play.
Fun game. Doesn't take very long to finish, took roughly 12 hours for me personally. Machine cap wasn't a problem, for me at least (48/50 at finish).
Some things that might be helpful to know for anyone playing this game:
- You can right-click to instantly take something out of a container.
- Hints are a thing in the map icon but at least for me the "i" button for machines was enough to figure out what to do. It shows you what inputs are accepted.
- You can use InputMergers as temporary storage. Kind of clunky but gets the job done.
- Make sure to not mix any materials together unless you're immediately going to sell them, because this can become very painful to fix.
Some criticisms:
- While the machine cap wasn't an issue for me personally, it almost was. Increasing it by, like, 10 shouldn't be an issue.
- You should be able to connect pipes by just clicking on one end then on the other. Currently it does show the pipe connection thing, but it doesn't actually work, you have to drag.
- Later on in the game, it can become difficult to see if machines are actually doing anything. There should be more floating points if it's <0.1.
- Please add some storage machine, which just contains a lot of inputs with no outputs. This would also require the next point:
- Make it so you can take materials out of Input containers.
- [ending spoiler] There should be some sort of progression after the ending, even just adding an ability to sell elixir to speed up the game permanently would be fun
- Add an "output per second" label for Output containers, so you can see how much is getting produced.
- Make the minimap show the full map, with the current camera position being highlighted. It currently doesn't let you see much beyond the camera.
- [late game spoilers kind of] "Consume the elixir" under Upgrades shouldn't appear until you have acquired some elixir. It's kind of a spoiler to what's ahead.
- The "Fast Time" feature is very confusing. It's nowhere explained what it does. From what I've seen, I got 10x speed for a few minutes when there was a day between my plays, and that's the only time where it would activate. I would suggest instead making it so you can, for example, sell essence to speed up the time temporarily, as this would be useful because the ending does get a little grindy and you have to wait a lot.
- Don't show numbers using scientific notation, as "1.4e4" for example, show them as normal. I've never had a single number in this game go beyond the 10 thousands, the notation just confuses things here.
Overall though, it's a great game that I would definitely recommend playing. It's fun trying to figure out how to make things work, and it can be quite challenging. It's fun to look at the system you've built when you're done.
Despite the above criticisms I would still give the game a 5/5 star rating because it was just a lot of fun.
I find it interesting how when you reach the machine cap the game tells you "Reached machine cap in this town!", makes me want to think if there's some plan to add more features to this game, which I would absolutely adore. Though I feel like a bunch of changes would need to be made to make it possible for much larger systems. Still, amazing game with great additional potential.
@Mateon1 you make essence by putting energy in both slots of the essence purifier. You make glass by putting sand through an arc furnace. I think stone dust is more efficient for going through transmuters, which come later.
Finished the game in 11 hours in 1 sitting good game. I might play the game again when there's a new content.