General Update
PlinkIdle’s development is rolling along!
We’ve been putting together a new build for web, which will likely serve as the teaser/demo version for Steam later on. This one is shorter and meant to showcase the game’s vibe, rather than provide the full hours-long experience.
Our current “big build” (the one with many hours of gameplay) has been super useful for testing, but as folks on itch pointed out, it’s also very imbalanced. Coins flood in, the balance falls apart, and progression collapses after just a couple of hours. Painful to see, but also incredibly helpful, because it clarifies what needs to change. My current priority is to address that.
What We're Designing
The core idea that we're exploring now is splitting apart Stage-based upgrades and Global Upgrades. This will ensure that players have to earn some ball currency before they can really invest, rather than carrying over their coins from the previous level and dumping it all at once.
So, in this mockup you can see how the buttons might look for Stone, if everything was unlocked, and things are starting to get expensive because it's late game. On the right is an example of early game, the Wood stage, when things are still early/locked. You can see how the unique stage currency (balls) can be used to invest in stage-related upgrades.
Global Upgrades will be long term, run-based, and ultimately very expensive to take them to a high level.
Drop Button Cooldown
Rarity Chance
The ability to unlock Auto Drop spawners (of which there will eventually be 3, we think)
And Stage-based upgrades would be as follows:
Peg upgrades
Peg splitters
A way to customize the stage further (each stage will ideally have a little gimmick to solve, like a way to repair missing pegs in the wood level, or a slow debuff to thaw in the winter level)
The player can also invest in the auto drop cooldowns for each stage.
The idea is that the stage begins slow, peaceful, and empty, and the player needs to invest the balls collected in making it come to life.
Other Priorities
Some other stuff we're working on:
Localization, because we'll be publishing the game in Asia with Gamersky! We're very excited about that.
Thinking hard about a skill tree. I'd like to have a skill tree that goes into rewarding idle play vs active play, but I'm still in the early stages of planning that.
Builds, bugs, fighting with Steamworks. Lots and lots of time spent just banging our heads against the wall with various tools and processes.