Hey everyone,
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I wanted to share my first real attempt at making a browser incremental/idle game. The game is called Star Idle. I am honestly a total noob at this and I am very much learning by doing, so please don’t expect some perfectly polished thing.
Few days ago i was already writing about it and people in a similar subreddit here encouraged me to dig into what others were talking about. Reading peoples posts/coments helped me alot - so thx for this nice community in here.
Also yes, I know people here are not always the biggest fans of “vibecoded” games - Yup i have read some mean coments :S.
I get it. I still wanted to try it because it was a fun way for me to actually build something instead of just thinking about building something. I learned a lot already, and honestly that part has been the most fun.
To the game:
The game is themed around Star Atlas - I talked to the CEO and got permission to use Star Atlas assets, but the actual game loops and systems are my own ideas. It is not meant to be a copy of Star Atlas gameplay, more like a F2P idle/incremental prototype without the use of NFTs, Crypto or Blockchain- but still inside that universe.
The current loops are roughly:
- Mine iron/copper/carbon with mining ships
- Build scanners to find SDU
- Craft more ships and upgrade station infrastructure
- Build fighter formations with DPS, tanks, and support ships
- Fight asteroid routes like Dust Rock, Iron Grave, and Nova Core
- Upgrade weapons/shields/armor, repair ships, craft toolkits
- Spend quest/mastery points on branches like mining, scanning, and combat
- There are account saves and leaderboards, but it is still very much testing/balancing stage
Things i witnessed:
- Netlify free tier bandwidth got destroyed because my assets were way too big
- Not Compressing game assets hurt a lot lol
- Game ticks/offline progress gave me headaches in terms of using free tierd backend systems
- Wiring the backend was actually easier than expected
- Mobile optimization is hard, especially when every screen has too much stuff
- Balancing an idle game is way more confusing than I thought
Things that are probably still buggy or rough:
- Mobile possible but it is not optimized at all
- Balance, i did not think about any numbers in detail yet - especially later progression
- Combat animation/Combat/repair pacing
- Offline gains and autosave edge cases
- UI clarity, because I keep adding systems
- Besides SDU there is no RNG elements implemented yet (i want to change that)
I’m mostly looking for honest feedback: what feels fun, what feels confusing, where the pacing dies, and if the core loops are worth expanding. I am not pretending this is finished. It is more like “I built a thing, learned a lot, and want to see if other incremental/idle game people think there is something that could turn fun”
I included a guest account feature because i saw some posts in here where the coments were asking for it - they were also asking for a feedback panel inside the game, however, i did not have the time to implement that. Currently im running a very small discord where i talk to few people who just started to test. Honestly, their feedback and findings are eye opening - things i would have never considered myself.
Thanks for checking it out. Even harsh feedback is welcome, just please remember I am still learning.